DINCA » film

Notes on “Here Comes Nobody”

Wyatt Niehaus — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:48:24 +0000

“…But such acts of lulzmaking are magnetic on two levels, producing spectacular, shocking, and humorous events and images that attract media attention while simultaneously binding together the collective and rejuvenating its spirit. This runs counter to the reductive arguments about whether or not online organizing can breed the conditions necessary for serious, effective activism (see Clay Shirky in the affirmative, Malcolm Gladwell in the negative); the pursuit of lulz, and the shared technology used to do so, are means of creating a common, participatory culture. (Of course, the pursuit of lulz is also an end in and of itself.) ”
-from Here Comes Nobody by David Auerbach and Gabriella Coleman

If there is one explicit role of the internet in relation to activism, it is to cultivate a broader accessibility to political and social issues. Without question, Anonymous does this. However, there have been a rash of viral political agendas that have seen light through videos, online petitions, and twitter campaigns. Do these attempts at broadening the accessibility of activist agendas fulfill their greatest function or do they reduce human rights issues and campaigns for social change to a novel 21st century spectacle?

Since its rise in popularity, there has been no shortage of critiques regarding the Kony 2012 campaign in which young, well-to-do, white American men do their best to disarm and dismantle the militant, child-soldiered regime of warlord Joseph Kony by way of viral video. The video moved swiftly through social media circles, accumulating likes, notes, and retweets at an unheard of rate. Invisible Children, the organization responsible for the video, was able to gin up a tremendous amount of online support for their cause. But outside of a whole host of ethically dubious issues surrounding the content of the video itself – did the Kony 2012 campaign transfer into a meaningful movement that yielded real-world results? The Invisible Children campaign demonstrates one end of a spectrum of political activism on the web.

On a separate end of this spectrum are the protests of SOPA and CISPA, as well as more divisive gestures of direct action like the Anonymous attack on major credit card companies, dubbed Operation Payback. It seems that one factor behind the effectiveness of these campaigns is their relation to the internet. They toe a line between virtual and physical consequences. The swift backlash against SOPA and CISPA existed so prominently on the internet, quite obviously, because it concerned the internet. It concerned the freedom of its users, and the sovereignty of its institutions. The same might be said for Operation Payback. This coordinated effort by Anonymous to attack major credit card providers that denied service to those who sought to donate money to Wikileaks produced such strong feelings within the organization simply because the issue at hand related directly to the agency of a website. Understanding the link between earnestness and effectiveness is not an issue unique to the internet, but as web-culture expands its gaze, it is important to assess the internet’s ability to bring about meaningful change in circumstances far removed from the web.
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Hand Motions is a blog column on DINCA continually featuring writing from Louis Doulas, Wyatt Niehaus and Ria Roberts.

Support the 2012 Chicago Underground Film Festival Kickstarter Campaign

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:27:41 +0000

There’s only three days left to help the Chicago Underground Film Festival reach it’s Kickstarter goal. Please consider donating to this worthy cause. The CUFF crew does some truly amazing things in Chicago — year-round — and the festival fosters a fecund environment for underground filmmakers, freaks, patrons, and curious movie watchers every year.

The CUFF just released its 2012 official lineup and it looks promising. View the 2012 lineup via Bad Lit.

Support the arts. Help CUFF.

The CHICAGO UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL (CUFF), a showcase of defiant and offbeat cinema that confronts the tired, the market-driven, and the predictable. Through its eight-day program of adventurous, experimental works, CUFF celebrates the artistic, aesthetic, and just plain old fun side of independent filmmaking while challenging and transcending commercial and audience expectations.

Much more than a film festival, CUFF has gained a reputation as one of Chicago’s most anticipated cross-cultural summer events. Daily screenings at the Gene Siskel Film Center are followed by parties and live music events.

Exhibiting filmmakers receive travel stipends and lodging to attend the Festival, plus full accreditation that includes access to all public screenings, parties, concerts, and other events. With support from the Independent Feature Project (IFP)/Chicago, the Festival also provides filmmakers with prime exposure and networking opportunities with engaged programmers and producers. What’s more, CUFF presents hand-crafted trophies to the films that are deemed best or most interesting in a wide variety of categories, along with “Made in Chicago” and Audience Choice Awards.

Your contribution will help CUFF bring out-of-town artists to Chicago for this year’s festival, providing funds for travel and lodging. CUFF aims not simply to screen film and video, but also to provide a forum for discourse between filmmakers and audience members. As external funding sources for the arts continue to disappear, it has become increasingly difficult for festivals to provide travel stipends, or for artists to finance their own plane tickets and hotel rooms. Each artist that CUFF is able to bring to Chicago enriches the festival experience for both the audience and the other filmmakers, and your donation will have a direct effect in sustaining CUFF’s role as a dynamic, challenging, and fun part of Chicago’s cultural calendar and summer film festival circuit.

Check out our pledge levels…we want to thank you for your efforts…but feel free to pledge any amount you wish! No rules! — Bryan Wendorf, CUFF

2012 CUFF kickstarter page

CUFF website

2012 CUFF Official Lineup via Bad Lit

Photos from the 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 04 Apr 2012 12:07:57 +0000

People in the Michigan Theater Lobby

Program Director David Dinnell with filmmakers Robert Todd & Jodie Mack

Michigan Theater Marquee

Michael Robinson speaks

Candles

Sunny at the merch booth

35mm Clear Leader

Jesse Malmad (Bad At Sports) & Tom Colley (Video Data Bank) chillin'

American Falls signage

Phil Solomon's American Falls

Leighton Pierce Threshold Of Peripheral Induction signage

Leighton Pierce's Threshold Of Peripheral Induction

Leighton Pierce artist talk at the Threshold Of Peripheral Induction installation

Some photographed moments from the 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival. Feel free to share and use.

There are plenty more photos by Abby Rose here.

Ann Arbor Film Festival

Phil Solomon’s website

Leighton Pierce’s website

Michael Robinson’s website

Jodie Mack’s website

Robert Todd’s website

Video Data Bank

Bad At Sports

(Photos by Theodore Darst)

2012 (50th) Ann Arbor Film Festival Award Winners

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 19:23:00 +0000

Ann Arbor Film Festival
50th Festival Award Winners

“The 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival is proud to announce this year’s award winning films as chosen by our esteemed jury: Michael Robinson, Kathy Geritz and Peter Rose.”

Ken Burns Award for Best of the Festival
Lack of Evidence (Manque de Preuves) (Hayoun KWON)

The Stan Brakhage Film at Wit’s End Award
Voluptuous Sleep (Betzy Bromberg)

Lawrence Kasdan Award for Best Narrative Film
Palaces of Pity (Daniel Schmidt, Gabriel Abrantes)

Michael Moore Award for Best Documentary Film
Guañape Sur (János Richter)

Award for Best International Film
Untitled (Neil Beloufa)

Peter Wilde Award for Most Technically Innovative Film
Vexed (Telcosystems)

\aut\FILM Award for Best LGBT Film
The Evil Eyes (Bobby Abate)

Award for Best Sound Design
Remote (Jesse McLean)

Kodak/Colorlab Award for Best Cinematography
Undergrowth (Robert Todd)
Within (Robert Todd)

The No Violence Award
If the War Continues (Jonathan Schwartz)

Gus Van Sant Award for Best Experimental Film
Sounding Glass (Sylvia Schedelbauer)

Chris Frayne Award for Best Animated Film
It’s such a beautiful day (Don Hertzfeldt)
Traces (Scott Stark)

The Barbara Aronofsky Latham Award for Emerging
Experimental Video Artist
Ceibas: The Epilogue – The Well of Representation
(Evan Meaney)

Prix DeVarti for Funniest Film
Walt Disney’s “Taxi Driver” (Bryan Boyce)
Shadow Cuts (Martin Arnold)
Pluto Declaration (Travis Wilkerson)

Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker
The Strawberry Tree (Simone Rapisarda Casanova)

George Manupelli Founder’s Spirit Award
By Foot-Candle Light (Mary Helena Clark)

Art & Science Award
20Hz (Semiconductor)

The Eileen Maitland Award
Irma (Charles Fairbanks)

Award for Best Music Video
Go Outside by Cults (Isaiah Seret)

JURY AWARDS:

As Above, So Below (Sarah J. Christman)

Tin Pressed (Dani Leventhal)

Curious Light (Charlotte Pryce)

Landfill 16 (Jennifer Reeves)

August Song (Jodie Mack, Emily Kuehn)

A Lax Riddle Unit (Laida Lertxundi)

Quest (Cautare) (Ionuţ Piturescu)

The House (Das Haus) (David Buob)

Envelop by Julianna Barwick (Cam Archer)

Ann Arbor Film Festival Animated .gifs Part 4 (Zoetrope by Jodie Mack and more)

Andrew Rosinski — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 17:02:57 +0000

peddle-powered Zoetrope by Jodie Mack

Another collection of animated .gifs capturing moments in or around the 50th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Jodie Mack’s website

Zoetrope

AAFF 50th Annual AAFF Schedule.

(animated .gifs by Theodore Darst.)

Ann Arbor Film Festival Animated .gifs Part 2 (American Falls by Phil Solomon)

Andrew Rosinski — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:20:38 +0000

AMERICAN FALLS
Phil Solomon, US, 2010, 56 min, three channels, color, sound
March 25 – April 2, 2012
Work Gallery | 306 State Street | Ann Arbor, MI 48104 (map)

Here are a few glimpses of the beautiful installation of Phil Solomon’s American Falls at the Work Gallery in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as part of the 50th annual AAFF.

If you’re in the area, surely don’t miss American Falls at the Work Gallery, which runs until Monday, April 2.

Tonight — March 30, 2012 — Phil Solomon will present and discuss a program dedicated to his films at 9:15pm at the Michigan Theater.

Films by Phil Solomon

American Falls at the AAFF

Phil Solomon’s website

50th AAFF Schedule.

(animated .gifs compiled by Theodore Darst.)

DINCA Coverage of the 50th Annual Ann Arbor Film Festival

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 12:07:32 +0000

DINCA will be in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from 3.28–4.1, reporting on the 2012 Ann Arbor Film Festival.

Today is the first day of the 50th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival. The AAFF has a superlative lineup of events this year, with over 200 independent and experimental works, including new work by Deborah Stratman, Ben Rivers, Ben Russell, Michael Robinson, David Gatten, Laida Lertxundi, Kerry Laitala, Scott Stark, Mary Helena Clark, Fern Silva, Bobby Abate, Jodie Mack, Evan Meaney, and many more, plus some very special treasures and gems from avant-garde cinema.

If you’re in midwest, this is a week of events worth road-trippin’ to; if you’re not in the midwest, this is a week of events worth road-trippin’ to.

The 50th AAFF will include special programs of work by Peter Rose, Robert Nelson, Barbara Hammer, Michael Robinson, a juror presentation by Kathy Geritz, Phil Solomon, Paul Clipson, a Leighton Pierce gallery walkthrough, and three Bruce Baille retrospectives.

As part of the AAFF’s 50 Screen initiative, Phil Solomon has installed his “American Falls” installation at the Work Gallery; Leighton Pierce has installed his “Threshold of Peripheral Induction” at the University of Michigan’s Slusser Gallery; and the Michigan Theater installations, the Gallery Project exhibition, the Nickels Arcade exhibition feature plenty more treats.

More on the AAFF’s 50 Screen Initiative:

The 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival presents 50 SCREENS, a city-wide series of free film, video and moving image installations. Throughout film festival week local, national and international artists will illuminate more than fifty screens in galleries, theaters, shops, outdoor locations and non-traditional screening spaces in Ann Arbor. The intention of this expansion beyond traditional cinema screenings is to more widely engage the public with film as an art form in celebration of the 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival, taking place March 27 – April 1, 2012.

As aforementioned, DINCA will be in Ann Arbor reporting on the AAFF from Wednesday, March 28 – Sunday, April 1, 2012. Andrew Rosinski and Theodore Darst will be representing DINCA; if you, too, are at the AAFF, let us know.

This week on dinca.org is AAFF week, so stayed tuned for some interesting coverage of the festival — also checkout our twitter profile for some menial updates — dinca.org, dedicated to disseminating Sacred Visions 2 U.

2012 AAFF Schedule

AAFF 50 Screens schedule & overview

AAFF: 50 Screens

Trailer: A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS by Ben Russell & Ben Rivers

Andrew Rosinski — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 16:20:03 +0000

A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS (TRAILER) from Ben Russell & Ben Rivers

Get ready for the cinematic hot fire. Coming in Summer 2012.

From pagan re-enactors to Scandinavian communes, black metal concerts to Arctic hermits, and the forever Golden Hour to the Northern Lights, A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS is an inquiry into the possibilities of a spiritual existence within an increasingly secular world.

Starring musician Robert AA Lowe (LICHENS) and co-directed by Ben Rivers (UK) and Ben Russell (USA), A SPELL is a feature-length film that lies between fiction and non-fiction, a record of experience that proposes belief in transcendence as a viable outcome of living in the now.

This trailer features music by LICHENS and LITURGY and was supported in part by PUMA. Creative Catalyst Award in partnership with BRITDOC Foundation - www.britdoc.org/catalyst

Listen to: Lichens – Faeries

Thoughts on Act of Valor

Jack Kentala — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 02:19:40 +0000

Call of Duty: The Movie, for better or worse

By Jack Kentala

(Preface, before I forget: If you can’t read between my smushed-together lines, I’ll come out and say I liked Act of Valor. I systematically pushed my expectations to their absolute lowest level so that it’d be impossible not for me to enjoy this film. And while the film itself may have its own ulterior motives, it felt like a nice Fuck You to see it on Oscar night, which is the official policy of this critic/filmmaker/alto-saxophonist to not watch.)

In the Call of Duty videogame series, players usually inhabit the roles of faceless soldiers on the front lines of rather intense battles. You play it in first person; when you aim your gun, you literally pull it up to your virtual, invisible face and look down iron sights or a scope. In short: It wants you to feel what it’s like in a hot combat zone. The first time I played it, I could only play a mission or two at a time, since my veins had yet to learn to pump ice water when playing any COD.

Within this framework, there’s usually a very small handful of characters who are integral to the plot and, for the sake of the player’s sanity, they are made bulletproof. If they get shot, they fall down and are combat ineffective for a few seconds, and then they get right back up.

Meanwhile, in the maelstrom of combat, you’re often supported by an endless wave of allies. These poor souls usually don’t last long and, when your crosshairs float over them, you see their phonebook-plucked name, lowly rank, and a stock polygonal model out of probably about twenty varieties. These serve in stark contrast to characters seen in games like the megaselling Call of Modern: Modern Warfare series, featuring guys who have names and appearances that stick: there’s the SAS badass Captain Price, who always goes into combat with only his trademark soft-cover boonie and never a helmet; his mohawked protege “Soap” MacTavish who can’t seem to wash the tactical facepaint off his mug; or the fan-favorite-but-killed-off-anyway “Ghost,” sporting a facemask of a skeleton.

When playing these games on the hardest difficulties – the proper-noun Hardened and the controller-throwing frustration of Veteran – you spend a lot of time flat on the ground, either waiting for your health to magically regenerate or to pick your way across a map in rightful fear of a life-ending headshot if you even, god forbid, rise to a kneel.

I’ve beaten all Modern Warfare games on Veteran – and I say that as a sort of full disclosure rather than trying to impress the zero Dinca readers who give a shit because, honestly, it’s more part of my obsessive nature than flashing those pointless Achievements on my gamercard – and I’ve seen a lot of guys die. But not Price. Not Soap. Sure, I’ve accidentally shot them one too many times in a dark corridor and had to reset to the last checkpoint. (The only consequence besides the reset is a blurred-out screen with “Friendly fire will not be tolerated!”) But those other guys with template last name plucked off a spreadsheet? Those guys get slaughtered. And, no matter the circumstances, they keep magically surfacing from the rear, seem to lack the visual acumen to survey the piles of their fallen comrades, and end up as fresh corpses themselves. You could literally camp out in a corner, just out of harm’s way, and watch these dudes get popped in the grape all goddamn guy.

So therein lies the greatest problem with the feature-length Navy recruitment film, Act of Valor: There’s no Price. There’s no Soap. There’s simply a bunch of guys without personalities rushing into the heat of battles. These are the apparently-”active” “duty” Navy SEALs who are supposed to guide us through Act of Valor. There’s absolutely nothing personable or sympathetic about them. Yeah, one is an expectant father (though it became impossible to tell the difference between him and his similar-looking best buddyroo). Another is black and has a gold tooth. Some are older. Some are younger. But it’s the same middling rush of anonymous white guys like Call of Duty cannon fodder.

But wait–! Unlike the COD masses rushing onward toward a quick, painless death, the SEALs in Act of Valor are relatively bulletproof. As a Navy recruitment film (and I’m not making this up; if nothing else, check out this Huffington Post article [which, to remain neutral in these thoughts, I haven't read in full]), there’s a very clear message: if this movie, somehow, makes you want to become a SEAL, the Navy sneakily assures you that you won’t get hurt. Well, that, or you’ll die a motherfuckingly-heroic death. Other than that, one guy loses an eye but doesn’t seem to mind. Another is shot about twenty times but merely ends up in wheelchair.

So it’s all pretty easy according to the Navy’s version of modern warfare in Act of Valor: No, you won’t get both your hands blown off by an IED. You won’t go mad from PTSD. You’ll only face up against Bad Guys, and you won’t have to make any tough moral choices or follow questionable orders. Shit, you’ll even get to check out exotic locales like Costa Rica, Somalia, and an island off Baja California.

That in mind, there’s not a single mention of the endless War on Terror. Unless I am horrifically mistaken, “Iraq” or “Afghanistan” or any of those bothersome Arab states (or Iran or Pakistan) are never mentioned. This is particularly confusing when, at the start, a graphic pops up when each forgettable SEAL is introduced; it lists the number of tours aforementioned SEAL has completed, though it never say where such tour occurred.

It’s a troubling whitewashing of the United States’ current woes overseas (which, coincidentally, the Modern Warfare videogames also avoid like a shitstick; the developers prefer the safe choice to make The Russians the permanent bad guys). The main antagonist of Act of Valor is an Islamic extremist, but he’s a white Chechen who converted to Islam. Worse: His recruited suicide bombers are also converts, and they’re, for whatever reason, Filipinos. It’s unwieldy plotting because if the movie is going for the gold-standard “Realism” (which is impossible to determine lest you were/are actually a SEAL), it has to take into account that, other than run-of-the-mill encounters with Somali pirates and something as daring as the bin Laden takedown (to be made into probably over a hundred movies over the century; at least Kathryn Bigelow’s will certainly be good), the US military is spending an awful lot of time fighting a bunch of dudes who misinterpreted the Koran and are easily manipulated.

While I’m on the topic of political correctness, I also have to raise the flag on a sequence in Mexico conducted with what I assume are sort of Mexican Special Forces. It involves smuggling people into the States, and instead of going “the easy route” through Canada, it seems the sequence was wedged in there to remind everyone that, technically, Mexico are our allies. (But so is Pakistan, and look how well that’s going.)

There’s also an interrogation scene that, for the sake of brevity and the plot’s timeline, lasts about two minutes. I’m sure the start of the interrogation uses tactics common to skilled interrogators – namely, talking about bullshit just to get the interrogatee talking and to confuse their mental defenses – but it’s absolutely ridiculous. The guy gives up intel with only the implied idea that he’s cutting a deal in which he’ll be able to go back to his family; “Senior,” the guy ostensibly in charge of SEAL Team Seven, only offers the alternate that the Bad Guy would otherwise spend the rest of his life in a “box.” The only aggression shown by Senior is when he cuts the bullshit and, when cued for something dramatic, just kind of sweeps a glass off the table and talks a shade more menacing. No secret CIA prison. No Enhanced Interrogation Techniques; no waterboarding. The Navy, as portrayed in Act of Valor, doesn’t do that! Of course not! It’s like an alternate fantasy world where Guantanamo Bay simply doesn’t exist; where one of Our Own, Bradley Manning (I’ll straight-up say it: that kid is a fucking hero), is under lockdown and solitary confinement, staring down life in prison for what many consider to be one of the most patriotic acts in recent history (e.g. revealing a bunch of docs most of us already knew about or were declassified).

I’ll round out the political correctness: I know Today’s Military is supposedly changing (what with letting The Gays in and all), but the movie takes great pains to show women in leadership roles. In some rare spots it doesn’t clash. But considering that SEALs are one of the last bastion’s of all-male dick-measuring (and all such Alpha Male-ism was scrubbed from Act of Valor), I don’t buy some of the scenes where the SEALs are partly briefed by a woman. That is, without them cracking wise either on the spot or later.

But as for actual Movie Stuff, I’ll offer this minority opinion: the “active” “duty” SEALs aren’t nearly as horrid actors are you’d expect. Sure, the between-mission joshing is too scripted and forced for non-pros, but in the heat of ops, it seems right. Military operations are about killing off your emotional side and becoming a machine of pure logic; communication is used to relay concise action, not emotion. So if it seems stiff when a should-be-stressed-out sniper during one mission isn’t stressed out, well, I can only think of all the books I’ve read and all the secondhand accounts I’ve heard about the need to get completely iced out before and during combat. (And it’s This Writer’s opinion that, unfortunately, that is what probably causes such massive outbreaks of PTSD during wartime. But if that wasn’t the case, we wouldn’t have as effective and terrifying of a military as we do today.) So it’s a no-win situation: If there was heightened emotion in the action scenes, it wouldn’t be “authentic,” and with the “authentic,” clipped way the SEALs go about their business, the average Michael Bay fan might feel a tad cold. (Update: Box office receipts differ.)

The jarring bad-acting moments come out of contrast. The first is a long voiceover that starts the film and carries most of the way through that doesn’t make any sense until about halfway, and it’s read with all the woodenness of a Speak ‘n Spell; it doesn’t help that it’s mostly a bulleted list about such now-vague words as Honor and Courage. The biggest disconnect comes during a scene between the two main Bad Guys, who are professional actors. It’s a quick scene that won’t win any screenwriting awards, but it’s like Orson Welles suddenly showed up for a scene and, by comparison, remind why they’re pro actors. (Kind of how Welles hijacked the part in The Third Man when he gives his famous “cuckoo clock speech.” No offense to the acting capabilities of Joseph Cotton.)

I’ll also offer another choice nugget: Considering that the two directors of this film cut their teeth as stuntmen, this is a pretty good debut. Maybe they had an awesome AD. Or, since it shines best in the action scenes, credit the ASC-approved cinematographer or the squadron of editors. The latter probably did the best they could out of the jumble (and also with the Navy breathing down their neck since they had final cut approval; they apparently were very specific about taking out certain shots and even frames that they didn’t find too flattering or maybe revealed some awesome super-rifle we’re not supposed to know exists), what with a POV that jumps all over the fuckin’ place. There are aerial shots from drones, shots only possible using nightvision cameras, and a lot of Call of Duty-borrowed helmet-mounted cameras that are always slightly off axis and, in general, more annoying than visceral.

Act of Valor, as a whole, seems made by guys who play as much Call of Duty as I do; and Call of Duty itself, in its single-player campaign, aspires to find the same drama as a blockbuster action film with all the realism of its Modern Warfare suffix. And, like COD, the music usually dies out when action happens, since a soundtrack of gunshots gives that hard bass hit to the midsection far better than any sad strings. But the sad strings are there when there’s the need to add some cheese or try to force reflection after the adrenaline-wash aftermath of combat, a quick rampdown of excitement from 1,000 to 10. One second, bullets zip past your ears. The next, you’re on a bird or a boat out of a hot zone. In Act of Valor, this first happens after the film’s first mission, with the SEALs taking swifts out of an enemy encampment, suddenly on a peaceful river in Costa Rica and not hauling ass down dirt roads, chased by successive waves of militamen. Considering the nature of the mission – a hostage rescue that, spoiler be spoiled, was arguably successful – the SEALs probably were trying to push out any bullshit heroics to stay combat effective lest they need to go back to their guns.

It works. (And not just because it’s a bunch of pretty shots of cool tech and ghillie’d up men that cement the status of SEALs as Real American Heroes.) It reminds me of a late-game sequence in the latest COD game, Modern Warfare 3, in which you’re pulling a VIP out a Siberian diamond mine. The game throws you into a familiar Saving Private Ryan-cribbing shell shock, and while you’re being dragged away in what is basically a non-interactive cutscene, you get a gun to ineffectively target the enormous quantities of Russians converging on your position, your aim all wobbly because you’re seriously injured. The series’ trademark Courageous-Yet-Wistful Music kicks in as you’re dragged to a helo, all while watching heroic Delta operators stay behind and cover you in glorious semi-slow-motion. You have no choice to stay, and you can’t help them (e.g. you can shoot as many guys as you want, but the result will be identical) as they stand their ground, get shot to shit, and hold onto every last ounce of strength as they lay down enough fire for the bird to clear the mine before it collapses.

It’s motherfucking heroic – especially if you suffered through that shit on Veteran – as the Delta guys refuse the evac and cover the helo as it leaves, to the protest of Captain Price, who begrudgingly admires the Yanks. Realistic? Rescuing the Russian President and his daughter inside a Siberian diamond mine while brave Delta operators ensure it can get out safely? Not at all.

And the plot and heroics of Act of Valor? Not really.

But both are damn fun.

ScanOps (2011) & Workers Leaving the Googleplex (2011) by Andrew Norman Wilson

Andrew Rosinski — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:47:42 +0000

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations – 365

The Inland Printer - 164

Wohlgemeynte Gedanken über den Dannemar – 281

Wohlgemeynte Gedanken über den Dannemar – 113

Wealth of Nations – 4

The Inland Printer – 152

The Economic Review – 592

Libraries – 109

ScanOps
by Andrew Norman Wilson
2011

Some of Andrew Norman Wilson’s work, especially his work pertaining to google, explores the modern day digital proletariat class, and Google’s surreptitious marginalization of their lower-tier employees. Workers Leaving the Googleplex (2011) and ScanOps (2011) are two components of Wilson’s effort to examine Google’s colored badge worker system.

Workers Leaving the Googleplex (2011) is an essay video that Wilson filmed during his employment at Google, and the corollary of his filming of Workers resulted in his termination from Google. The film is an interesting and earnestly curious look at google’s colored badge worker system, with particular focus on the subordinate yellow badge workers that work in building 3.14159, scanning and digitizing books for Google Books.

ScanOps also plies the territory of internal Google operations. The images are culled from Google Books and are images, “in which software distortions, the scanning site, and the hands of ScanOps employees are visible.”

“ScanOps is (or was) the internal department name for Google’s onsite book scanning contractors.”

So the images (above) are distorted results of the work the yellow badge book scanners have completed during their 4am–2pm shift — a nice visual component to the film — Wilson plans on making analog reproductions of these digital images, perhaps in form of a book or “image/sculptures.”

Apart from his google-related efforts, Andrew Norman Wilson’s work typically carries a warm ingredient of white-collar levity (vide his pond5 remix videos and his FlowSpot Test videos made for pond5).

At his “Quicktime Playback Demo and Networking Session” screening at the Nightingale back in 2011, he would intermittently clunk down the stairs wearing rollerblades, descending from the projection area to grab a sports drink from DJ Office Max — who was spinning Yello’s “Oooooh Yeah” song — and Mr. Wilson quickly slaked his thirst with electrolites, only to sidle his way through the crowded venue and clunk back up the stairs to the projection booth to screen more pond5 remix videos.

Wilson deservedly has a forthcoming solo show at Chicago’s Threewalls gallery, we’ll keep you updated on that.

Workers Leaving the Googleplex, Andrew Norman Wilson, 2011, HD video, 11 min, color, sound

Workers Leaving the GooglePlex investigates a top secret, marginalized class of workers at Google’s international corporate headquarters in Silicon Valley. As I documented the mysterious yellow badged “ScanOps” Google workers, I simultaneously chronicled the complex events surrounding my own dismissal from the company. The reference to the Lumiere Brother’s 1895 film Workers Leaving the Factory situates the video within the history of motion pictures, suggesting both transformations and continuities in arrangements of labor, capital, media, and information.

Andrew Norman Wilson’s website

Andrew Norman Wilson on Vimeo

FlowSpot by Andrew Norman Wilson

http://books.google.com/

How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google’s New Privacy Policy Takes Effect

2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards: Last Day To Submit + New Judges Added

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 19:33:14 +0000

Today — February 20, 2012 — is the last day to submit your work to the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards. The submission process is simple, and if you already have your work hosted on Vimeo, and if you have an existing paypal account, this is an easy-breezy process that takes minutes.

Entrants can submit any original work as long as it premiered online between July 31, 2010 and February 20, 2012, or any original work that has never premiered anywhere. The winner of each category receives a grant of $5,000 and the Grand Prize winner receives a $25,000 grant to produce new work.

Click here to submit. You have until 11:59pm on 2.20.2012.

It was recently announced that Peter Greenaway (A Zed & Two Noughts, 1985) will be a judge of the experimental category, and Steve James (Hoop Dreams, 1994, The Interrupters, 2011) will judge the documentary category.

The panel consists of three judges per category across 13 categories, and includes actor and director James Franco; Parks and Recreation Star Aziz Ansari, 2012 Oscar Nominee Lucy Walker; Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood; Scott Pilgrim vs. the World director Edgar Wright; snowboard superstar Travis Rice; Thierry Mugler and UNIQLO creative director Nicola Formichetti; Shelly Page of DreamWorks Animation; Barbara London of The Museum of Modern Art; advertising legend David Droga; and many more.

The current list of judges includes:

Action Sports

Advertising

Animation

Captured

Documentary

Experimental

Fashion

Nick Knight
Nicola Formichetti
Humberto Leon, Opening Ceremony+Kenzo

Lyrical

Motion Graphics

Music Video

Narrative

Original Series

Remix

Beardyman
David Dewaele, 2manydjs + Soulwax
Kasumi

7 Question Interview with Jeremy Boxer, Vimeo Festival

2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards

Thoughts on Haywire

Jack Kentala — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:49:25 +0000

A surprising film from an always-surprising director

by Jack Kentala

It gives me great pleasure to say, in all earnestness, that Haywire (2011 or 2012 depending on the source) is Steven Soderbergh’s best film since Contagion. And the latter came out last September.

I don’t know what the fuck happens in Mission: Impossible – Shitty Title, but I guarantee this is a better film by several magnitudes. While Soderbergh is no stranger to fringe genre filmmaking – Ocean’s Eleven, Twelve, and, uh, Thirteen, as well as the still-underrated Out of Sight and the film-school staple/revenger The Limey – here he tackles an action/spy/thriller mashup that plays far better to his sensibilities than, say, Paul Greengrass or David Fincher.

Much fuss has been made about the casting of Gina Carano, well versed in the world of MMA (mixed martial arts, e.g. punching someone in the face until they lose consciousness…in a steel cage!) and someone you definitely want on your side in a bar fight. Many feared that a non-vet wouldn’t carry a film or, more importantly, stand her ground against phenomenal actors like Michael Fassbender and Ewan McGregor. And she pulls it off completely, with a quiet verve that, for whatever reason, reminds me of Richard Jenkins in The Visitor (or, dare I say, the lead in French Resistance piece Army of Shadows, but with a shade more emotion). Carano also looks like she could double for Rachel Weisz; wouldn’t be surprised if unwitting filmgoers mistook the two.

So that’s probably a good departure point between comparing the real-life exploits of Carano versus pornstar Sasha Grey in Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience. It’s not like Soderbergh hasn’t used non-pros before. Anyone remember Bubble? I sure do, and not just because it was fantastic. I think it’s definitely the fact that sliding Grey into the role of an escort and Carano into a physically-lethal operator in Haywire that led to this dubious comparison. Depending who you ask, the question is either “Who’s the worse actor?” or “Who’s surprisingly excellent?”

I think I’ll leave it at that.

Haywire is also very special because it’s a Soderbergh trifecta: he directed it, shot it (as DP Peter Andrews, as per guild rules), and cut it (as Mary Ann Bernard, also because of guild rules). It’s not as rare as a Soderbergh quadfecta (Solaris, which SS directed, shot, cut, and adapted [very liberally from Stanislaw Lem's book rather than Tarkovsky's film]) or the quinfecta (Schizopolis, with the man as director, writer, DP, lead actor, and music [sort of]). There’s a school of thought (actually a film school of thought that was drilled into my head [by a certain institution] and brashly discarded when I set about both my student shorts and no-budget features) that you should only do one thing on a film, somehow reasoning that if you, say, direct and shoot, you can only concentrate on one or the other. Haywire proves counter to this argument. Contagion (which SS “only” directed and shot), which everyone absolutely loves (right?), proves that the man can wear many hats and still deliver an unfairly-consistent film. (Wish I could do the same!)

I’m working off an outline written on a napkin, so you’re going to have to bear with me. This was also supposed to just be a bulleted list.

I’m mentally going back to Salt, starring Angelina Jolie as a woman spy who can beat the shit out of people. But in that I didn’t once really think about gender roles in action movies, mostly since Jolie has done a lot of those. For a hardcore MMA fighter, Carano is miraculously easy on the eyes (yeah, I’ll trot out the Rachel Weisz comparison again), but she’s not as impossibly beautiful as Angelina Jolie. (If nothing else, Carano’s lips aren’t the size of those wax ones you used to buy as a kid.) So while Jolie has operated largely in the capacity as eye-candy-that-fights (Exhibit A: In Wanted, yeah, she kicks ass, takes names, etc., but also steps nude out of a bathtub while two dudes look on and pop hidden boners.), Carano doesn’t have the burden of having to look too pretty to sell her character because, hell, if her character was too pretty we’d want to check her resume. A colleague and I have an ongoing debate about Haywire, in which he insists Carano is far too low-key to play the lead. I countered saying that this sort of “realistic” spy film (aka not the sort of film with Bourne-esque miracle stunts) exists in the “real world” where a spy’s best asset is their ability to melt into a crowd. Granted, for a film, you have to strike a balance. I thought that Carano made that balance work; my friend didn’t.

(Aside: Just remembered that Salt was actually written with Tom Cruise in mind before they switched it to Jolie with nary a difference.)

And while Soderbergh has dabbled in pretty much everything, he’s fairly new at action outside of some scenes in the Ocean’s, Out of Sight, and a little in The Limey and Traffic. Well, Che is about dudes with rifles and grenades, whereas there are probably less than twenty gunshots in the whole of Haywire. Soderbergh (or screenwriter Lem Dobbs) wisely stuck with close-quarters combat, which is absolutely brutal. It’s much moreso brutal because Soderbergh lets David Holmes’ score completely drop out during fights; all we hear are body blows, things breaking, and gunshots. (Another aside: Gunshots in movies are “movie gunshots” that sound nothing like what actual gunshots sound like. I’ve fired many guns in real life and the sound is more of a singular, blow-out BLAM than a “movie gunshot” that sounds like twenty different things happening at once. Haywire gets gunshots right.) Soderbergh also wisely keeps the shots as wide as possible, which is akin to kung-fu films and early Jackie Chan (like Police Story or Druken Master II, not his American bullshit, back when Jackie Chan could fall three stories onto hard ground [as he did in Project A] and not die), which showed that the actors actually had some skill. This was long before the What The Fuck Is Happening? It’s Cut Too Fast! trend that’s been going on in Hollywood for a while, which was first used to hide the stuntmen and now is employed for reasons that are beyond me. (As much as I love exactly 41% of The Dark Knight, I hate their obtuse, obstructed, dark-as-fuck, edited-so-fast-it-could-induce-a-seizure fight choreography. And it extends far beyond just that film.)

Unfortunately, while scenes with Carano and random dudes (most likely stuntmen) duking it out are kept whole with longer and wider shots (since Carano can easily hold her own), her bouts with Michael Fassbender and Ewan McGregor are cut a little faster because, presumably, those guys needed a double lest they wanted a broken skull.

While I’m grinding out minor quibbles, here’s another: The whole framing device for about 75% of the story is lame. To summarize: Carano gets out of a hotspot by carjacking a car and its driver. For a private-ops spy, she sure spills her entire narrative to her passenger, and even though it’s in the spirit of trying to clear her name, it’s a tad convenient and cuts up the past and present at not-always-perfect points. Also: The carjacked man looks and sounds so much like Edward Norton (especially through windshield glare) that I had to double-check IMDb that it wasn’t him. Here‘s what I’m talking abut, though he looks a lot less doughy in the film.

One last caveat: The film seemed too short. That’s actually probably the biggest compliment I can offer up. It’s just that the spy genre has trained viewers to expect acts 1 and 2 to plot out the final “job” that unfolds in act 3. Here, the two main “jobs” blend into each other and, individually, don’t last that long. If you see Haywire, you’ll know what I mean when, near the end, Channing Tatum has a somewhat dumbing realization and says, “I was in Barcelona seven days ago?”

Much like I gushed in my thoughts on Contagion, it’s astounding how many great players are in the film given its $15 million budget. Carano probably came in on the cheap, and the rest must owe Soderbergh favors for dogsitting or driving them to the airport at 5 a.m. one morning or something. It’s like the starting lineup for badasses past and present: Michael Fassbender, Ewan McGregor, Bill Paxton (not Pullman), Michael Douglas, Antonio Banderas. All that was missing was a Matt Damon cameo. (And Che Part 2 showed that Damon can have a minutes-long cameo without derailing the film and making everyone say, “Hey!… Isn’t that Matt Damon?” Probably because he was wearing a hat and speaking Spanish, albeit Matt-Damon-sounding Spanish.)

Haywire was great. It’ll be great again when it hits DVD in two months and I can watch it again, most likely with the always-excellent commentaries by Soderbergh. But no matter how hard I try, all these recent Soderbergh films are depressing because the man insists that he’s retiring after Magic Mike (let’s just all pretend it’s not about male stripping so we won’t feel weird getting tickets), his HBO-miniseries biopic on Liberace, and a 2013 film currently titled The Bitter Pill. I feel like I’m pre-eulogizing, but even if Haywire is derided as a subpar genre pic (most likely by those whose palette is more used to Mission: Impossible – Shitty Title, the schizo Bournes, and whatever turd the next James Bond turns out to be), Soderbergh threw his full force (or at least the trifecta) behind a new genre, a first-time lead, and a non-sexy (read: non-Ocean’s) style. And it came together. And I want more.

DINCA: Top 10 Films of 2011

Andrew Rosinski — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:12:26 +0000

I have not seen every film that was released in 2011, but I’ve seen a good many, and here are my reflections on the most notable films of 2011.

10.
DRIVE
directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
written by Hossein Amini (screenplay), James Sallis (book)
stars: Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston

A dirty neon, LA love story, wherein a real taciturn hero (Ryan Gosling), and a winsome young mother (Carey Mulligan), meet under unfortunate circumstances. Do people make the circumstances, or do circumstances make the people? Seemingly this is the thematic question underlying the film.

The casting is a success: Gosling and Mulligan are the best part of the film.

Drive is a soundtrack film, this is made apparent after an enthralling opening chase scene when Kavinsky’s “Night Call” plays over the opening credits. Driving motifs have always been a part of Kavinsky’s music, so this is a fitting choice for the film. Along with the Kavinsky track, “Under Your Spell” by Desire and “A Real Hero” by College are a perfect musical fit. In many ways the soundtrack augments this moody love film — but perhaps sometimes the film is too reliant on its soundtrack for emotional cues — but it still works well, and Cliff Martinez does a fine job laying down the sonic bed of suspense.

On the outside, Drive has a candy-coated shell of action, nuanced-suspense, and retro aesthetic; at heart, the film is a love story, a love story of forlorn hope, where we wait for the people we love, where we commit crimes for the people we love.

9.
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS
directed by Woody Allen
written by Woody Allen
stars: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Kathy Bates

Midnight In Paris definitely is Woody Allen’s best film since Match Point (2005). Owen Wilson plays Gil, a screenwriter vacationing in Paris with his uptight fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams). The two spend more time with McAdams’ pedantic friend, Paul (Michael Sheen), than they do alone. Pedantic Paul sets the table for some funny art humor.

Wilson is a screenwriter having trouble with his first novel. Luckily, he stumbles upon a magic hot-spot where at the strike of midnight, he is carried back to an earlier period marked with creative fecundity and intellectual glamor, where he meets and falls for a beautiful and charming woman (Marion Cotillard), and hangs with artistic heavyweights like Pablo Picasso, Luis Bunuel, Salvador Dali, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, T.S. Eliot, and is introduced to a famous publisher (Kathy Bates) who proof-reads his novel.

The film also features a lovely soundtrack, which is highly recommended. According to iTunes, I’ve listened to “La Conga Blicoti” by Josephine Baker over 40 times since the film hit the theatre.

The film is a halcyon fantasy filled with love, creativity, and magical elements of time-travel.

8.
THE TREE OF LIFE
directed by Terrence Malick
written by Terrence Malick
stars: Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Jessica Chastain

Much like the title denotes, The Tree of Life is an art house epic, and many words could be written about it. You could write essay on it, a treatise — a tome.

Emmanuel Lubezki’s cinematography is glorious. Malick is a great director and there’s no arguing his dedication to this project and to his vision.

A very literal way of interpreting this abstract thing called life.

7.
MELANCHOLIA
directed by Lars von Trier
written by Lars von Trier
stars: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland

Amongst my friends, Melancholia is the most polarizing film of the 2011, which makes sense, because the film itself is bipolar, dark, apocalyptic, and toned with abject depression — but it’s also a dark comedy.

Part 1 of the film features the pulchritudinous Kirstin Dunst as a despondent bride on her big wedding day, a wedding so big that a professional wedding planner (Udo Kier) is on the floor and commanding the events. The bride makes some outlandish decisions, deviates from the fastidious schedule, and hilarity and absurdism ensues, but in a very fragile and dramatic sense.

Part 2 of the film deals with the characters’ varying expectations, interpretations, and actions pertaining to the oncoming contact with a mystifying planet named Melancholia.

Melancholia deals with absurdism and celestial catastrophe in a very dark and beautiful way.

6. (TIE)
Two gems of American independent cinema.

6. (TIE)
MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE
directed by Sean Durkin
written by Sean Durkin
stars: Elizabeth Olsen, Sarah Paulson, John Hawkes

Marcy May Mary Marlene is a winner in the storytelling department: despite its prosaic cinematography, its slow-and-steady approach to non-linearity works surprisingly well and allows the viewer to walk in the shoes of a very fragile character experiencing psychosis; it illustrates the cause-and-effect relationship and harrowing aftermath of mental abuse.

Elizabeth Olsen gives a strong performance; director Sean Durkin builds a strong arc of rising action up to a very strong ending — an impressive first feature film effort — great storytelling with little budget.

6. (TIE)
MEEK’S CUTOFF
directed by Kelly Reichardt
written by Jonathan Raymond (screenplay)
stars: Michelle Williams, Bruce Greenwood, Paul Dano

Meek’s Cutoff — probably Kelly Reichardt’s best film to date — is a realist and minimalistic period drama. Did you play the oregon trail computer game in school growing up? Well, this pensive film is like that, insofar as its action involves rationing your food and water, and fixing supplies like busted wagon wheels and axles. The film is based on a historical event involving a certain frontier guide named Stephen Meek back during the mid 1800s.

Kelly is a homie: she makes films on a scant budget: 2mil for Meek’s Cutoff, an estimated 200,000 budget for Wendy & Lucy (2008), Old Joy (2006) definitely had lesser, and her first feature River of Grass was shot on 8mm (saw River of Grass recently at the Nightingale).

5.
THE INTERRUPTERS
directed by Steve James
stars: Ameena Matthews, Jeff Fort, Cobe Williams

Kartemquin makes many great documentary films; The Interrupters is one of their best. Directed by the illustrious Steve James (Hoop Dreams, 1994), the film examines the pervasive problem of senseless violence in Chicago, focusing on the benevolent women and men — the interrupters — who obviate the violence by forming relationships with and watching out for those with a short fuse.

Some of the Eddie Bocanegra scenes in the film were shot in/around the neighborhood I live in. You see the Ceasefire stickers around here, you see the Ceasefire signs around here, sometimes you hear the gunshots late at night. Senseless violence truly is a problem in Chicago . . . and not just in Chicago, it’s a ubiquitous problem, as we all surely know.

It’s sad, very sad. It seems every time you watch the local news you see a new story about an innocent kid — walking to school or waiting for the bus — who gets killed by a stray bullet related to gang violence or some senseless altercation. The Interrupters examines certain stories like these.

I saw this film at the Gene Siskel Film Center; one of the interrupters, Cobe Williams, was at the screening. He provided great insight during his Q&A.

Fun fact: for those that have seen the film, Cobe said Flamo now lives in Minnesota and is pursuing stand up comedy.

This film deserves academy recognition and wide distribution. Hey PBS, pick it up.

4. (TIE)
SHAME
directed by Steve McQueen
written by Abi Morgan & Steve McQueen
stars: Michael Fassbender, Carey Mulligan, James Badge Dale

A Manhattan neorealist story (with two magnificent professional actors: Michael Fassbender & Carey Mulligan) about the strife of life and the imbalance of relationships, love, and family.

4. (TIE)
THE SKIN I LIVE IN
directed by Pedro Almodóvar
written by Pedro Almodovar & Agustin Almodovar
stars: Antonio Banderas, Elena Anya, Jan Cornet

A madmen will go to great lengths for love. Almodóvar at his best.

3.
UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES
directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul
written by Phra Sripariyattiweti (inspired by the book of), Apichatpong Weerasethakul
stars: Thanapat Saisaymar, Jenjira Pongpas, Sakda Kaewbuadee

The film’s sublime beauty is enchanting. Whether it be by dint of a red-eyed monster, a human, a ghost, or a talking catfish, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives channels the Life Force with profound imagery and allegory, expanding the cinematic ambit with the supernatural and other forms of life foreign to our own known existence.

FACING THE JUNGLE,
THE HILLS AND VALES,
MY PAST LIVES AS AN ANIMAL AND OTHER BEINGS
RISE UP BEFORE ME.

2.
TABLOID
directed by Errol Morris
stars: Joyce McKinney, Kent Gavin, Dr. Hong

An impeccable documentary film by Errol Morris, a master of documentary cinema. Arguably, this is Morris’ quirkiest film to date, and it’s a love story, a very bizarre love story. A madwoman will go to great lengths for love.

The motion graphics, titles, and animation are supreme. Right up there with I.O.U.S.A. (2008) for best graphics in a documentary.

Joyce McKinney is a very intelligent and eccentric person, a true romantic; her commitment to true romance is — to say the least — fascinating and admirable.

1.
A DANGEROUS METHOD
directed by David Cronenberg
written by Christopher Hampton (screenplay), John Kerr (book)
stars: Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, Viggo Mortensen

Perfected success.

A glorious story of young woman’s mental liberation and the profundities of true love, the conjugal life, work, friendship, and the conscious and subconscious life.

Keira Knightley, Michael Fassbender, and Viggo Mortensen gift superlative performances as Sabrina Spielrein, Carl Jung, and Sigmund Freud, respectively. Howard Shore creates a deeply moving musical score (sample “Galvanometer,” or “Siegfried,” or “Letters,” or “Sigfried Idyll”). Cronenberg directs and orchestrates a marvelous slice of biopic. A Dangerous Method clearly is 2011′s cinematic best; a perfect success.

The mental fight is a harrowing thing; freedom of the mind is a powerful and beautiful thing.

— A. L. R.

TOP 10
1. A Dangerous Method
2. Tabloid
3. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
4. (tie) The Skin I Live In
4. (tie) Shame
5. The Interrupters
6. (tie) Meek’s Cutoff
6. (tie) Martha Marcy May Marlene
7. Melancholia
8. The Tree of Life
9. Midnight In Paris
10. Drive

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Cave of Forgotten Dreams
Certified Copy

BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM
Slow Action by Ben Rivers

BEST 3D FILM
Mercurial Madness by Kerry Laitala

David Cronenberg on the Human Technological Conduit

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:03:08 +0000

“Technology is us. There is no separation. It’s a pure expression of human creative will. It doesn’t exist anywhere else in the universe. I’m rather sure of that.”

— David Cronenberg

2011 In Film (Not Really) / The Three Worst Superhero Movies of 2011

Jack Kentala — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:01:45 +0000

by Jack Kentala

2011: I finished the picture edit for my second feature film (with a sound overhaul in its late stages for an early ’12 release); wrote a very long book; started prepping my third feature; seriously considered getting a dog and/or getting engaged; and I saw none of the movies that has caused nationwide critics to cream their pants.

I take a bit of that last part back. It’s rather thrilling to see The Tree of Life tentatively making the top of giant amalgamating Best-Of polls, and it’s a huge victory for director Terrence Malick, who has started a late-career Renaissance that will probably kill him. (I “reviewed” this fine film and own it. I’ve watched the universe-creation sequence roughly fourteen times. No comment on how many of those times I may or may not have cried.)

And now I’m slowly remembering my point: I didn’t see enough awards’ bait to feel like I can make any sort of definitive statement on 2011 as a whole. I didn’t like Drive nearly as much as everyone else. I refuse to see The Artist (and don’t get me started). Hugo gave me my first 3D headache. Shame is playing two states away. I’ve got Tabloid and Margin Call in my Netflix stack (right underneath a disc of Justice League Unlimited cartoons). I’d rather spend the ticket price on an actual racetrack bet than see War Horse.

I did, though, see a fair amount of middling fare, like the unreasonably-enjoyable Fast Five, the oh-god-they’re-probably-going-to-turn-this-into-a-franchise Battle: Los Angeles, and director Zack Snyder lost all his cred with his better-than-it-deserved Watchmen adaptation with the fetish flop Sucker Punch.

I also saw pretty much every superhero film released and, these days, that’s no small feat. So in keeping with the time-honored tradition of making pointless lists at calendar year-end, here are the three worst superhero films from 2011.

The Worst

Captain America: The First Avenger

Let’s get the title out of the way. I’m sure the studio marketing hit squad pulled their hair out over this one. Sure, anyone with a passing knowledge of Marvel’s stable of superheroes knows Captain America (especially after his much-publicized comic-book death). But given that Captain America: The First Avenger is set back in that quaint time of the 40s, Marvel must’ve thought we’re all too stupid to see the fast-incoming Avengers films (set in the present day), so they tacked on “The First Avenger” so we mouthbreathers wouldn’t get too confused between scenes of horrid CGI and Hugo Weaving’s ghastly German faux-accent. (In his defense, he was probably having fun while getting paid.)

A lot of my problems with the film (which are also problems within the film itself) have to do with the framing narrative. It’s World War II. The US is at war with Germany. There’s a reason why so many videogames go back to this era: It was arguably the last time our nation faced off against an adversary that could be considered unredeemably “evil.” It was also a halcyon era sandblasted by the idea of an America owned by middle-class whites, and just off every Main Street there were pies gently cooling on windowsills and pretty girls who’d get “serious” by holding hands.

We all know it’s total fucking bullshit, though, but Captain America’s world is that fantasy world. All the more fantastic because the titular Captain, in his European scrapes, only fights a weird branch of the German Army that spouts lame, just-off-the-mark chants of “Hail HYDRA!” and gear up for war wearing big masks. The latter lets our heroes murder as many HYDRA drones as possible without that pesky PG-13 rating climbing up into the R realm. It’s one of those MPAA tricks: You can murder as many people you want as long as it’s historical (Saving Private Ryan) or you can’t see their human faces (here), but if you say FUCK more than twice, it’s an R for you, sir. (And never mind that Captain America is nowhere near an R-rating. Just saying.)

There’s also the typical Superhero Movie problem in that the Captain America mythology is so huge it has to include some of the bare bones of his band of hooligans. They barely get any screen time beyond Howard Stark (e.g. Iron Man’s dad) and the Captain’s gee-gosh love interest, the criminally-underused Hayley Atwell. (See AMC’s pretty-good miniseries remake of The Prisoner to see her do more than give teenage boys boners.)

So Captain America is dragged down by the central tenets of the genre, though it’s certainly not the first to befall its fate. Simply put, the running time can’t cram in the Captain’s origin story, a love interest, hooks into The Avengers (other than in the title), and any substantial fear wielded one of the worst villains in 2011: Hugo Weaving as a Voldemort lookalike, both missing their noses, though Weaving’s Red Skull is, yep, bright red.

And I didn’t even get around to the creepy-as-fuck scrawny version of Chris Evans, who looks like he desperately needs to find the visual effects supervisor for Benjamin Button. At least Evans won’t need to play a weakling for the planned 2014 sequel.

The Second-Worst

Green Lantern

Hal Jordan, hero of Green Lantern, is given a ring of power by a dying pink fish-man. He plays the reluctant hero and becomes part of the weird-alien collective called the Green Lantern Corps. And with his ring, using sheer willpower and imagination, he can create any solid object. Well, as long as it’s bright green.

So during the first public need for using his power, Jordan is faced with a helicopter about to crash. With his ring, it’s obvious he can easily save it. He could make a giant pillow for it to land on. Or rebuild the broken parts of the helicopter with juicy green energy. Or, hell, do it like the goddamn cartoons and encase it in a giant stasis field and slowly bring it down to land.

But what does Jordan do? He turns the rest of the helicopter into a Formula-1-style racecar and builds a winding track for it to drive on and slow down.

This is what we’re dealing with.

A college friend was big into comics, and he and I saw Batman Begins the day it came out. He was blown away by the film which, while far from perfect, wasn’t as shit as the other Batmans before. Through him I learned a passing knowledge of comics and, like all comic nerds, he always argued that a Green Lantern Corps ring is inherently overpowered. I actually remember getting a rather long treatise on the Justice League and how Hal Jordan is considered to be the greatest Lantern in the Corps.

I’m really glad I wasn’t with him when he saw Green Lantern.

Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by the fantastic casting of the original Iron Man. Robert Downey, Jr. was already Tony Stark. Ryan Reynolds is still best known as Van Wilder and Scarlett Johansson’s leftovers (good thing the Marvel Avengers and DC Justice League stay separate lest there be some awkwardness between Reynolds’ Jordan and Johansson’s Black Widow). He’s not a strong actor, and while his reluctant-hero shtick works, he doesn’t have the necessary gravitas to step into the role of a badass whose power comes from a ring that looks like it was made from melted-down Ring Pops.

Also, I may have spoken too soon when dissing Weaving’s Red Skull as the most laughable villain, since Peter Sarsgaard’s elephant-man Asperger’s-syndrome-suffering troglodyte might beat out silly red makeup.

What’s interesting about Green Lantern, though, is that the studio and DC Comics aren’t pushing for a Justice League movie yet, so we’ll have to suffer through Green Lantern 2 first.

(Note for all three of you interested: Granted, Marvel had a big lead on its superhero-ass-kicking-ensemble with two Iron Man films, Thor, Captain America, an appearance by Black Widow in Iron Man 2 [though neither Ang Lee's Hulk or the Ed Norton-starring The Incredible Hulk will use that Hulk], but DC seems to be having a tricky time assembling their Justice League. While it’s confirmed that there won’t be standalone films for Avengers Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Hulk, only Green Lantern has a “canon” Justice League movie with the other six either in the making or being rebooted. What’s somewhat sad is that after the will-probably-be-very-good-but-not-brilliant The Dark Knight Rises, there will be another Batman that has nothing to do with Chris Nolan’s Batmans, since this rebooted Batman will serve on the League. Zack Snyder is already on damage control, erasing all memories of Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns with the upcoming Man of Steel. If DC goes the route of Marvel and only makes three standalone films before venturing into an orgy of superheroes, there still has to be a sensical way to exhibit the “classic” Justice League lineup of Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Flash, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, and the Martian Manhunter without confusing filmgoers insofar as to dry up the box office. In other words: There will be a lot of probably-shitty superhero movies coming out for the next foreseeable, uh, decade.)

The Least-Worst

Thor

Look up the plot synopsis of Thor if you haven’t seen it or want to spoil it or just want to follow along with the few zingers I have left because, my dear Dincanauts, you do realize it’s almost Christmas, right? This writer has to make dog-treat cookies for my favorite canines without typing my fingers off.

Why Thor gets the backhanded compliment of being the least-worst of this honorable three is because, despite unwisely splitting its narrative between fantastical Asgard and boring-as-fuck New Mexico, the film is loaded with brownie points. First being that the early parts of Thor work splendidly as a fish-out-of-water tale, with godly Thor crashing down to Earth and, despite speaking remarkable English, doesn’t quite figure that things don’t work the way here than in Asgard. It speaks enough that I can remember a scene where Thor downs a cup of coffee at a diner, breaks his mug on the table, and shouts for more, confused why everyone else is confused because it’s apparent common in Asgard to smash your drinking object when finished. And I saw this movie back in May whereas the rest were DVD viewings within the last two months.

Thor’s crippling identity crisis stems for aforementioned narrative splitting. We have Asgard and its Shakespearean betrayal (which is probably the exact phrasing they used to attract director Kenneth Branaugh and actor Anthony Hopkins), all rendered in vivid color and crazy CGI. But then Thor quite literally crashes to Earth; and not just Earth but New Mexico, which is where all of America’s unwanted sand goes. I’m sure the disconnect was intentional, but it simply does not work, especially when the Earth story was far more compelling than the boring power struggle in Asgard; it’s like we, the viewer, are being punished for wanting to see candycane Asgard but only in very, very boring scenes, while all the interesting stuff is happening on Earth.

Thor also suffers from having too much talent that all seem like they’re slumming it for a paycheck. Natalie Portman is just shy of being too hot for portraying an astrophysicist, but she could pick better projects coming off her Black Swan Oscar win. (Never mind Portman’s appearance in the lame stoner fantasy Your Highness.) And while Chris Hemsworth effortlessly charms, the story lazily has Portman going all dreamy-eyed for Thor without reason. Stellan Skarsgard kind of flits around, since he doesn’t have breasts or big muscles. The Wire’s Idris Elba must be the first black guy after Asgard relaxed its Jim Crow laws or started equal-opportunity employment for dudes guarding a big galactic wormhole gate thing. Kat Dennings continues her career-long role as a semi-apathetic smartass who gets most of the one-liners (regardless of whether or not they’re funny).

There’s a common thread here: None of these films – and pretty much every superhero or action film released within the last decade – seem particularly-fulfilling because we know there’s something on the horizon. In the past it’s been a sequel, but now we have these unwieldy superhero-posse affairs threatening to consume the brains of our male youths. There’s already a trailer for The Avengers, despite Marvel confirming Captain America 2, Thor 2, and Iron Man 3 (the latter of which director Jon Favreau is as confused about as am I, because what the fuck can Stark do without his Avenging buddies?). So logic also follows that, at some point in production, someone had a great idea for the film but, nope, we need fodder for the sequel. It’s like climbing the hill of a rollercoaster only to find that there’s no big drop at all; just a low-speed, no-thrill ride through pretty scenery.

7 Question Interview with Jeremy Boxer, Director of the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 01:33:12 +0000

Dec. 13, 2011 — Vimeo, the amiable filmmaker and artist friendly video-hosting service, opened submissions today for the second Vimeo Festival + Awards, “which celebrates the most creative and original videos online and the individuals that make them.”

Beginning today through February 20, 2012, filmmakers can submit their works for consideration in one of 13 different judged categories.

Last year, the judge panel was impressive — David Lynch judged the “experimental” category — and this year the judges will be equally impressive; however, the judges are to be announced sometime in early January.

Submit your work to the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards ———> click here. Vimeo will award Grants of $5,000 to all of the 13 category winners, as well as awarding a Grant of $25,000 for the Grand Prize winner.

Jeremy Boxer, the Director of the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards, spoke with us yesterday. Mr. Boxer explains now, more than ever, is a propitious time to be an artist producing work that’s disseminated on the internet.

(1) Why should a filmmaker submit to the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards?

The main difference from traditional film festivals is we only accept work that has premiered online — anywhere — not just Vimeo. The majority of film festivals do not accept work that has premiered online. Our hope is that in the future every festival will accept work that has premiered online.

(2) What categories/genres are in competition in the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards?

There are 13 categories. Experimental, which is of course of interest to your readers. Lyrical is a new category this year. The Lyrical category encompasses poetic videos based on a personal world-view. These are personal representations of the way the creator looks at the world. For example, travelogues or time-lapses of a local neighborhood. Captured is a category not based on filmmaking technique but more on what is being captured by the video, for example, a performance based work or projection art.

The other new categories include Advertising, Action Sports, and Fashion and returning categories from our inaugural Vimeo Festival + Awards are:

Narrative
Animation
Original Series
Motion Graphics
Music Video
Documentary
Remix

(3) Will David Lynch return to judge the experimental category?

We are announcing a few of the judges now. The remainder of the judges will be announced January. The judges will be equally as impressive as in 2010.

(4) Filmmakers can submit their work using Vimeo via the Internet; are there post-internet distribution/exhibition opportunities in place for the winners? Will there be a time to P-A-R-T-Y?

We will have an Awards ceremony, talks, workshops and a bunch of screenings as part of the festival. As we are 6 months out, we’re currently in the planning process and are open to ideas. As we get closer to making that announcement, we’ll reach out to you with all of those specifics.

(5) Last year, Chris Beckman won the Experimental category award for his film OOPS.

Shortly thereafter, Beckman’s film was named an official selection of the corporate-industry-driven 2011 Sundance Film Festival and Beckman directed a commercial for Motorola, for whom he made a branded short film directly inspired by OOPS.

What potential professional opportunities are available to a filmmaker submitting to the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards?

Our intention is to provide filmmakers with opportunities they would never have had before. We want to provide the gold standard for what you can find online and in so doing provide filmmakers the potential to be seen by a much wider audience which could lead to their big break. Because of Vimeo’s reach, we can put a filmmaker’s work in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands.

After its discovery at the Vimeo Festival + Awards, Chris Beckman’s Oops was chosen as an Official Selection at Sundance Film Festival 2011. Chris then went on to direct for such brands as Motorola. Sundance reached out to me directly to ask for Chris Beckman’s information for him to be entered into the festival. This was great, as it was the first time I heard Sundance was accepting films that had premiered online.

Another inaugural award winner was Onur Senturk, he had just graduated university when he entered the Vimeo Festival + Awards. After winning for his film Triangle, due to the Festival’s exposure, Paramount asked him to create the motion design title sequence for Transformers: The Dark Side of the Moon.

The Overall + Documentary winner, Eliot Rausch, has been showered with media attention that landed him a spot on the Carson Daily Show and more commercial work than he ever expected to see in his lifetime. He’s in post- production on his latest documentary — a film he was able to produce with the grant money he received from winning the 2010 Vimeo Festival + Awards. He has gone on to be offered more work than he knows what to do with.

To give you a sense of what Vimeo can do for filmmakers, here is another very recent example. A few weeks ago, James Curran, a 28 year old from UK, put up his own homage credit sequence for “Tin Tin.” The beautiful animated piece came to the attention of Steven Spielberg who hired him for his next film.

You never know who might be watching.

(6) If you could send a submitting filmmaker one special message, what would it be?

The goal of Vimeo Festival + Awards is to expose your film to a much wider audience. We welcome you to submit and we wish you all good luck!

(7) Anything else you want to add?

We’re just hoping that more filmmakers will submit so that more of them have a chance at all of these incredible opportunities in existing and new categories added for 2012.

————> Submit

2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards

Jeremy Boxer on Vimeo

Submit : : 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards

Line Describing Your Mom (2011) by Michael Robinson

Andrew Rosinski — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 06:17:20 +0000

Michael Robinson, U.S., 2011, 5m 50s, color, sound, DV

“This is the new choreography of devotion, via the vlog of southern nightmares.
This is the light that never goes out. This is the line describing your mom.” —Michael Robinson

Screens as part of Looking Through a Glass Onion at the NYFF on Monday, October 10, 2011, at 3:45pm.

2011 NYFF Views From the Avant-Garde

Brief Thoughts on Drive

Jack Kentala — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:02:22 +0000

Forget the map; the route is flawed

By Jack Kentala

Here’s how you do it right:

Take a dogshit script and, instead of throwing a few million at the marketing budget to get two decent box-office weekends and enough longtail cashflow like DVD sales and streaming rights, you hire the following people:

Director Nicolas Winding Refn, who helmed the challenging Broson and the criminally-underseen Valhalla Rising, to try to keep a hold on the nowhere-subplot-heavy screenplay and purge any unnecessary pap from something that should’ve been far more straightforward than the end product;
Director of Photography Newton Thomas Sigel (his best work: Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and Three Kings) to light nighttime driving scenes that don’t look like a lazy gaffer taped a mini-kino on the dash to give that always-lit sheen to the driver and passengers;
Editor Matthew Newman, who, hell, has basically only worked with Refn, but whose work on the triumvirate of Bronson, Valhalla Rising, and Driver should get him his ACE invite soon enough;
Supervising sound editor Lon Bender who, like any solid soundman, works for the sake of working (between the lines: he’s worked on a lot of duds), and, here, turns the roar of Fast Five to a whisper, in which cars pass like ships in the night save for a gentle razor-blade slice (I swear the source effects he used were lion and tiger roars);
Composer Cliff Martinez, who just runs with the not-motivated-whatsoever 80s vibe that seems relegated only to some pieces of music, the neon-pink cursive credits, and Ryan Gosling’s racing jacket;
Ryan Gosling, who acts across all levels of budget to gives James Franco a run for his money as the most chameleonesque actor of his generation; and, hell, he’s better than Franco;
Carey Mulligan, who’s criminally underused (and whose accent forgivably slips a few times); but then again, she’s been criminally underused in all of cinema except for her turn as the haunted Kathy H. in Never Let Me Go (which just might be the performance of her career… both past and future);
And Bryan Cranston since he’s Bryan fucking Cranston.

And then there’s what you don’t do but, well, sometimes end up doing them because of a crap script:

Have all sorts of gratuitous violence that is 1) sudden, 2) uncharacteristic of the characters, and 3) uncharacteristic of the actors portraying said characters;
Slap some 80s vibe on the posters and realize, shit, there’s nothing 80s about this movie;
Introduce about ten subplots or big details that are never important or explained (Gosling as a Hollywood stunt driver; Mulligan falling in love with a total dude [pre-Gosling, natch]; a mess of mob ties that go nowhere; the whole thing with the mask; and, well, how some parts of the ending just kind of fizzle out).
Start the movie with a taut setpiece that gets you hoping the movie will be that exciting, only to repeat a semi-heist later that doesn’t come close to eclipsing the beginning.

But this is me here. Probably the biggest compliment I can give Drive is that the ending is exactly what the characters and style dictate. Chalk it up to Hossein Amini, who wrote the adapted screenplay, or maybe credit is due to Refn for draining it of all surplus; or all bloated emotion (un)deserved by all bloodied Heroes that may or may not make it to the end of the movie is probably not what said Hero wants, or ever wanted, or ever will want.

Postscript: My WTF moment: Refn won Best Director at Cannes? Well, at least they gave Malick the Palme d’Or, else there’d be hell to pay. Drive is a good film, but a Palme d’Or winner it definitely is not.

DINCArboreality

Andrew Rosinski — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 04:07:07 +0000

Going natural 4 First Nature.

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BEAST

Andrew Rosinski — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 08:07:24 +0000

BEAST from Ben Russell on Vimeo.

Three tall guys. Skulls. Strobe. Raucous. Strobe skull. = BEAST, a noise band fronted by BR, with Thad Kellstadt and Tim Nickodemus.

Synopsis: BEAST, described in numerous circles as a “three-piece percussive drone/noise force, complete with two drummers and skull-based strobe-electronics” is comprised of three 6’ 2”+ artist/ musicians Thad Kellstadt, Tim Nickodemus and Ben Russell. Members’ projects have been viewed at La Casa Encendida (Madrid), the Rotterdam Int’l Film Festival (Netherlands), the Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), and the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago). Epileptic eyes! Heart attack ears! BEAST BEAST BEAST BEAST BEAST

Filmed on 7/9/11 at the Co-Prosperity Sphere, Chicago, IL; recorded by Jesse McLean, edited by Ben Russell.

BR on vimeo
Jesse McLean on Vimeo
Thad Kellstadt

Thoughts on Contagion

Jack Kentala — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 23:07:17 +0000

When you get home, I guarantee you’ll wash your hands

by Jack Kentala
Steven Soderbergh: Easily one of the ten best American directors alive; who has directed over a dozen films (most of them very, very good); whose hyper-prolific output began a mere twenty years ago, with the Palme d’Or-winning Sex, Lies, and Videotape, when the son-of-a-bitch was only 26; who turned the modern noir The Limey into every film school’s selection for the day they talk about non-linear editing; who churned out three better-than-necessary Ocean’s films that made gobs of money so he could finance little-seen cheapo masterpieces like The Girlfriend Experience and the epic Che; who serves as cinematographer (as Peter Andrews, per guild rules) for most of his films, which seems almost impossible; who redefined the use of color in film in his 2000 Best Director-winning Traffic (competing against himself with Erin Brokovich, splitting his own vote and winning) and, by extension, probably spurring the rise of hyper-saturated films through a digital intermediate instead of negative manipulation; who has one film in post, one shooting, and two in pre-production; who, at the tender age of 48, has made repeated, probably-serious claims that he plans to retire to become a painter, simply to express himself in another visual art form–

–has just unleashed Contagion (2011), one of the best thrillers in a very, very long time.

Here’s hoping the guy just might change his mind and go Altman-style, directing until, shit, he dies.

So here we have Contagion. You’ve seen the previews. (I didn’t; I just heard who directed it.) You get the gist. Virus, pandemic, chaos. 1, 2, 3, right?

The greatest praise I can give to Contagion is that not a single scene (save, maybe, a bit of a tacked-on pre-denouement [let's just call it Prom Night] that reeks of test-audience input) drifts along on a lazy, panicked emotion; that Soderbergh and writer Scott Z. Burns (their second collab since the tonally-opposite The Informant!) have enough faith in the unashamed bleakness of the story to have absolutely zero comic relief (and, hell, even Traffic had some buddy-cop hijinks with Don Cheadle and Luis Guzman); and manages to cram what could’ve easily been an entire television series into a sub-two-hour film.

And whereas a director like Danny Boyle’s style is that he has no style, Soderbergh is the ultimate chameleon, in which he tailors each film’s aesthetic to exactly what it needs. Here he’s smart enough to know that Contagion is all story, and he doesn’t fluff it up with flashy editing or overblown cinematography. He has the rare gift, like Terrence Malick, to turn major stars into ordinary people, though it may just be as easy as not putting any makeup on Kate Winslet. Maybe chalk it up to Soderbergh’s lighting (or his gaffer’s, really), but this is as far removed from any CSI bullshit as you can get.

I majored in cinematography in college, so I like to imagine that I know a thing or two about it; namely, who has the chops to helm a Big Movie and who doesn’t. While Soderbergh might not be able to earn an ASC invite, he’s one of the finest cinematographers around. While he knew he could get away with murder (uncorrected bulbs, weird angles, odd, unmotivated camera movements) in the Ocean’s trilogy given their built-in profitability, his recent Che epic showed that, armed with the freakishly-awesome Red camera, he can do anything, and usually he’s the one doing it as operator. (Though on the Criterion commentary for Traffic, Soderbergh professed that he simply can’t work a gear-head tripod. Maybe in the eleven years since he’s learned how.) Though Che worked beautifully as a two-parter, each with a well-defined cinematographic style, Contagion might give it a money-run for his best lens work.

I can’t decide, though, that what I initially perceived as Contagion’s greatest weakest might actually be its strength. There’s not much substance here. Characters are given only basic motivation (protecting their family, trying to cure the world, et cetera et cetera) to soldier on with their increasingly-difficult lives and survival. We know the stakes are high just by looking at the world maps that pop up every ten minutes that show the world plunging into illness. The film expertly balances the trials of Matt Damon’s role as a Minneapolis dad keeping his daughter healthy and the ensemble of WHO and CDC employees trying to prevent the world from going out with a whimper-bang. Simply put, for this type of story – the Ticking Time Bomb, a rugged screenplay model among the pantheon of plot templates – we don’t need much else.

And here comes the part where I spiral back down to earth, find myself hitting this keyboard with less and less frequency, and trying to give my usual sort of non-conclusion. I hope you’re at least content that I’ve never slapped on a number or a letter grade or some bullshit to distill a movie into something to glance at to decide if you’ll check out Contagion tonight or stay in and watch Mad Men on Netflix Instant Watch. No, Contagion probably won’t be the best film of the year. No, it probably won’t make a Scrooge McDuck-sized vault of money akin to Ocean’s worldwide take. (Though with the inexpensive Red camera and Soderbergh’s knack for working hella fast and on the cheap, I doubt that there’s really much money to lose.) And yes, you’ll probably still hate Gwyneth Paltrow after seeing it. But Contagion is one of Soderbergh’s best films, and that’s no small praise. It also happens to give a good thrill-scare for something more terrifying than any terrorist can dream up or execute.

(Footnote: I was going to mention how I didn’t hear anything at all on the news or from friends that Soderbergh was shooting a film set largely in Minneapolis and, by extension, that they’d at least film exteriors here. IMDb doesn’t have MPLS listed as a shooting location, and if that’s true, production design Howard Cummings did his research to make the snow look like snow and not those damn soap flakes they use for everything else. And, thank god, there’s not a single hint of the not-real-at-all Minnesota accent as seen in Fargo. Yeah, some people have a trace of that accent, but dammit, don’t play it for comedy.)

(Footnote 2: These fine ears swear they picked up some recycled dissonant piano from The Limey for Cliff Marinez’s score here. And did I mention that Contagion has a great score?)

Werner Herzog Reads Where’s Waldo

Andrew Rosinski — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 14:16:34 +0000

An existential and poetic musing on Waldoian existence by the charismatic German film director, Werner Herzog.

Thanks to this video, I’m going to unearth all of my Where’s Waldo? books. Yep, I buried all of those books a while back, and it’s time to exhume.

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