Immortality?

I got exactly what I expected from Immortals. Well... that might be a little too kind.

Let's do a little math. For me, Immortals breaks down like this:

Immortals > Alexander (what isn't?)

Immortals < The Fall

Immortals > 300

Immortals = Troy

I liked Immortals well enough. It was exciting and for the most part quite enjoyable as a film. Immortals is also über-violent. Like, crazy violent. And I have to say after the milquetoast Rum Diary that I really was pleased to see violence have an actual effect on bodies in space. I find PG-13 violence in movies quite offensive. But Immortals is insanely violent, actually. Bodies are smashed to bits and there were times while watching this film when my friend George and I cringed and crossed our legs and covered our eyes and all the rest of the horrible reactions people tend to have while watching truly grotesque violence on screen.

The most important thing to note about Immortals, if you ask me, is the costumes. I really hope designer Eiko Ishioka (Tarsem's usual designer) gets recognized by the Academy for her stunning work. I also want to note the performance by Luke Evans as Zeus. Evans was in the Musketeers movie earlier this fall, as well, and he is less interesting there, but in Immortals, he is fascinating. His Zeus is a tortured, troubled figure filled with equal parts hope and regret, and Evans manages to convey all of this wearing next to nothing and spouting inane dialogue.

A couple other thoughts. It's easy to object to the use of violence in a film. The standard logic here is that by giving us so much violence to see, we become desensitized to it, and violence seems to mean less to us. That may be true – probably is – but I think the horses have left the barn on this one. So it isn't violence per se to which I object here. What Immortals does that I find really troubling is the way that it justifies violent action by constantly utilizing ideological buzzwords like courage and freedom and honor and glory. For me, the mobilization of these words is much, much worse than representing grotesque violence onscreen. Words like courage and honor work to justify violence by behaving as though murder and rape and torture and brutality are equivalent to courage and honor and freedom and justice. If they are not equivalent (and they are not) Immortals behaves as though violence is the only way to achieve honor and the only method for demonstrating courage. To my mind, this ideological nonsense is infinitely more damaging than showing what happens to the human body when it is doused in alcohol and set on fire or when someone cuts his tongue out with a pair of rusty, ancient scissors.

Also: this movie is not The Fall. It is definitely a Tarsem Singh movie. It's gorgeous and feels like it takes place in the middle of nowhere even though we are constantly being told exactly where we are. But... well it just doesn't have the kind of emotional center that The Fall had. Instead, Immortals has beautiful costumes and gorgeous bodies and lots and lots of blood. I object to none of those things categorically, of course (I appreciate all of them, in fact), but at the center of Immortals there is no compelling relationship or powerful theme. In fact, there is not much at all at the center of Immortals.

The Nominees: Part VIII of VIII / Summary

SUPERMAN RETURNS

1 Nomination:

Best Visual Effects

Director: Bryan Singer (X2, X-men, Apt Pupil, The Usual Suspects)
Cast: Brandon Routh, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, Frank Langella, Parker Posey, Kal Penn, Eva Marie Saint, James Marsden

High flying effects. This movie is big on effects and probably deserves to win this award. The effects really are top-notch. The movie, on the other hand, is laugh-out-loud bad, with all of the main characters being played by people far too young (and untalented) to fill their shoes. Sometimes the movie looks like a really expensive community theatre production of Superman III. And Kevin Spacey hams it up like you've never seen. Don't expect it to win anything on Sunday.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Visual Effects
My Rating: #70 out of 74

POSEIDON

1 Nomination:

Best Visual Effects

Director: Wolfgang Petersen (Troy, The Perfect Storm, Air Force One, Outbreak, In the Line of Fire, The NeverEnding Story, Das Boot)
Cast: Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, Richard Dreyfuss, Jacinda Barrett, Mia Maestro, Emmy Rossum, Mike Vogel, Jimmy Bennett, Freddy Rodriguez, Andre Braugher, Kevin Dillon

I liked this movie, and there are a lot of special visual effects in the film, but—here's the thing—they all look fake. I mean, they don't look really fake, but they don't exactly look real, either. I'm assuming that the exterior of the ship is all special effects, which is great, except the boat looks like a CGI creation. I liked the effects better in Casino Royale, though I liked that movie less than this one.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #39 out of 74

CLICK

1 Nomination:

Best Makeup

Director: Frank Coraci (Around the World in 80 Days, The Waterboy, The Wedding Singer)
Cast: Adam Sandler, Kate Beckinsale, Henry Winkler, Julie Kavner, Sean Astin, Christopher Walken, David Hasselhoff, Jennifer Coolidge

The makeup in this film is really, really good. The film is the most peurile, asinine waste of time you could ever sit through. It's the worst movie I saw in 2006, and I didn't think anything could get worse than De Niro's The Good Shepherd. Boy was I wrong. This movie is unspeakably bad. It has no intended audience, and it recycles a plot we've all seen about three hundred times. Spend less time at work. Spend more time with your family. You'll miss your family when you're older. Then the movie is racist and homophobic on top of all that. Awful. The makeup, as I said, is really, really good. They make Adam Sandler look around 50, and he really looks 50. Like, for real, you believe it. It's damn good makeup.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #74 out of 74

HAPPY FEET

1 Nomination:

Best Animated Feature

Director: George Miller (Babe: Pig in the City, Lorenzo's Oil, The Witches of Eastwick, Mad Max and its two sequels)
Cast: Elijah Wood, Nicole Kidman, Hugh Jackman, Robin Williams, Hugo Weaving, Brittany Murphy, Johnny A. Sanchez, Carlos Alazraqui, Lombardo Boyar, Savion Glover (for the dancing)

This film is insane, but it's a fun, ridiculous animated feature. Not my favorite of the year, but in a year without Miyazaki, this film deserves its nomination. The plot begins with a cliché, but quickly leaves any semblance of reality behind. It's an out of control plot with totally unbelievable plot elements, and I was fine with all of it.
Will Win: Best Animated Feature
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #45 out of 74

MONSTER HOUSE

1 Nomination:

Best Animated Feature

Director: Gil Kenan
Cast: Michael Musso, Sam Lerner, Spencer Locke, Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Fred Willard, Catherine O'Hara, Kathleen Turner, Jason Lee, Jon Heder

So fun. This is a truly imaginative feature with all kinds of cool things going for it. My friend Elizabeth even told me that all of the characters' movement is done through a motion-capture process like the one they used for Andy Serkis when he played Gollum. For all the characters! That is so cool. Anyway, it can't really win the award, but it's a cool picture.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #42 out of 74

Wrap-up:

Best Picture - The Departed
Best Director - The Departed
Best Actor - The Last King of Scotland
Best Actress - The Queen
Best Supporting Actor - Dreamgirls
Best Supporting Actress - Dreamgirls
Best Original Screenplay - Little Miss Sunshine
Best Adapted Screenplay - The Departed
Best Foreign Language Film - Pan’s Labyrinth
Best Cinematography - Children of Men
Best Film Editing - The Departed
Best Costume Design - Marie Antoinette
Best Art Direction - Pan’s Labyrinth
Best Original Score - The Queen
Best Sound Mixing - Dreamgirls
Best Sound Editing - Letters from Iwo Jima
Best Original Song - An Inconvenient Truth
Best Visual Effects - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest
Best Makeup - Pan’s Labyrinth
Best Animated Feature - Happy Feet

Some Thoughts on Literary Criticism

Today I was asked the question "What is the importance of literary criticism?" My answer was the following:

The job of literary criticism is to promote literature. To critique, judge, review and otherwise analyze and assess the form and content of literature in order that the public can know what is good and what is bad and so support the MARKET of literature. Criticism serves a specific function for the literary world, right? And isn't this its only function? To tell people what they should or should not go out and buy? To assess what does or does not fit with known forms?

Why do you analyze the things you analyze? Why do I write about film on my blog? The answer is, chiefly, so that other people will go see these films. By this of course I mean that there are a limited number of films that people can see (there is a limited amount of capital available to spend on films) and I wish to promote certain films over certain other films. Isn't criticism merely a capitalist system? Am I being far to cynical? Have I been reading way to much Foucault?

The lovely young woman who asked me this question actually liked my answer, so I thought I would share it on here since I seem to be sharing nothing on this blog of late.

P.S. I will finish my "Nominees" series as soon as I am done with Click.
P.P.S. I saw Poseidon today and I have a lot of thoughts about it:

A. I miss Shelley Winters
B. This movie was good. It was, in fact, almost exactly what I want from an action movie.
C. Though there was a near-palpable dearth of interesting dialogue, this movie was never, ever boring (unlike, say Casino Royale, Eragon, Blood Diamond, V for Vendetta, all of which at some point in the film started to make me fall asleep.)
D. Running time: 98 minutes. Perfect.
E. Richard Dreyfuss plays a gay character who functions as a regular guy. His sexuality is never an issue in the film and he isn't used as an easy laugh. It's excellent.
F. All of the people of color die in the film.
G. There are no Asian people in this film.
H. The representations of black men in the film are both stereotypical, de-sexualized figures. There are no black women in this film.
I. I was very invested in the characters in the film and genuinely felt that any of them could die at any moment.
J. Emmy Rossum is very pretty but should really, really, really take an acting class. Or five.
K. I love Freddy Rodriguez and I wish he worked a lot more.
L. Josh Lucas is hot.
M. Josh Lucas is hot.
N. All of the women (there are a total of three) in this film have exactly the same look: dark hair, gorgeous, small facial features, and they should all share a slice of pie.

Review: The Passion of the Christ

Last night I watched The Passion of the Christ.  I know everyone always says this, but the book was better.

I didn't care for the film for a lot of reasons.  I felt like the film didn't really go anywhere dramatically.  At all.  He sort of just kept falling you know.  I found myself yelling at the screen for him to "Stop falling!"  I mean, that's obviously Gibson's point with all of the falling and the torture, but it doesn't go anywhere.  The thing I yelled most frequently was "Jesus!" which I guess was inappropriate, but this movie is brutal.  It's one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen.  The final straw was a random crow pecking out a man's eye and then this shot of the crow's bloody beak and feathers: nasty.  I was so repulsed.

Aside from the sheer brutality and torturous qualities of the film, I guess what I come away with is that the Bible itself—especially the King James Version, which is what Gibson used for the English translations—is so much more magical and beautiful than this film.  There's this whole part in the scriptures when the sky goes completely black and the people can't see three feet in front of them.  The Jewish dead rise out of the ground and walk the earth under the darkness, and people think they have seen Isaiah and some of the other prophets.  The temple garment, a cloth that covers the outside of the temple and is about as thick as my car, is "rent in twain" in the King James Version: it was supposed to be impossible to have occurred and was supposed to symbolize Christ's triumph over Judaeism.

I loved the guy who played Pontius Pilate.  I thought he was wonderful.  I think the makeup might be some of the best makeup work I've ever seen on film: we'll see if the Academy can look past the film's controversial nature.  The cinematography and the costumes were boring, though.  Some color please!  I was dying for some color.  At least give the rich people some colorful clothes!  When I thought about color during the film, it occurred to me that here was a man of the lower classes being murdered by a lower-class mob.  None of them had any money.  Few had education, and what are they doing?  Killing someone.  It reminded me of gang warfare.

For me the film makes a lot of the same mistakes that Troy did.  Continually talking about gods—"Lord" in Passion seems used to excess—does not make us as an audience believe in gods.  I've read the Bible many times, and these crucifixion passages more times than I could probably count, but if you want me to believe something in a film, you have to show me.  And so, like King Priam in Troy, the Pharisees and the Jewish priests come off as religious weirdos... like the Southern Baptists of my childhood, but so do Mary and Peter and Judas and John.

I know this movie has meant a lot to people.  My brother, for one, seemed to think this movie was just the best thing since Old School, but I have to say I felt kind of tortured right along with Christ.  It was really difficult to watch, and without resolution or even emotion really.  I mean, the people were crying on screen, and I recognized the brutality of the Romans, but I didn't care.  I didn't love this man like I loved Lothaire Bluteau in Jésus de Montréal or Djimon Hounsou in Amistad or Denzel Washington in Glory.  And I wanted to care.  I felt like I probably should love him, but the filmmaker hadn't done anything so that I would.

Trojan: For your pleasure.

The reason I fell in love with The Iliad as a small child was the amount of meddling and interaction the Greek deities had in the lives of the folks on Earth. Each god and goddess had their favorite people and several loyalties.  It was a kind of "Melrose Place" in the sky, and the deities fought amongst each other, using the humans as pawns in some kind of eterna; heavenly power play.  I loved this about The Iliad, possibly because I thought gods that I could actually see and who would do shit for me were a really good deal, or possibly because I just dug the idea of competing with only eleven other people for power.

Troy, as you might have heard, does not have a single actor or actress playing a Greek deity.  The folks onscreen seem to mention these gods incessantly, but there is not a god to be found in this movie.  The result of this (in my estimation) miscalculation on the part of David Benioff, the screenwriter, is that the characters in the film come across to us as weird-o religious people who believe in about a million gods, none of whom we, in our infinite modern wisdom, believe in a bit.  The problem with this is that we are distanced from the characters considerably.  They make decisions based on these gods, and we're all thinking, "Haven't they heard of Jesus?" or, "Haven't they read Neitzsche?"  'Cause I have.  So I don't connect with these crazy, weird-o religious characters.  They seem old to me, ancient even, and this is death to a movie that is set in Ancient Greece.

The movie isn't awful.  I was rarely bored.  James Horner's score is awful, and some of the dialogue is just atrocious: Helen says, at one point, "Don't play with me... don't play," and I'm thinking, "Couldn't she have said 'toy?'"  The makeup is outstanding.  Pay attention for very small details that were all attended too by the makeup artist, who deserves an Oscar nomination for sure.  I wanted to mention the pronunciation of some of the names: Shakespearean actors have been pronouncing Priam as Pry-am forever.  In Troy, it's Pree-am (like preemptive strike).  And Menelaus, who we've all been taught is called Mene-lay-us, is pronounced Mene-low-us, which doesn't even look right if you think about it.  And did we have to make Patroclus, so clearly Achilles lover and confidant in The Iliad, into his cousin.  Everything was so very heterosexual.  I was so relieved.  No homos in this movie.

Brad Pitt is, in my estimation, quite good.  He is never overacting and mostly sturdy in the part.  He is capable of so much more as an actor, though, but I suppose this is not the movie for that.  This is a movie where he is the action hero.  Eric Bana is overdone.  I wished that sometimes he would deliver some of his lines without yelling.  No siree.  That was not to be.  Orlando Bloom is gorgeous and shirtless, and I suppose he's alright in the part, but Paris is such a fucking wimp that he's really hard to love.  The audience I saw it with was laughing out loud at him when he tried to convince Helen that he could support them by hunting for rabbit and deer.  We were seriously vocally laughing at him .  Brian Cox is the worst actor in the movie, easily.  He is huge, bombastic, and chews through scenery as if it's the last role he'll ever get.  I usually like him in films: L.I.E., Adaptation., even X2; but in this movie, he's horrible... just atrocious.  Peter O'Toole is fair, I guess, but he's just kind of a quivering old man through most of the movie.  Saffron Burrows is gorgeous.  Did I mention that?  She is just beautiful throughout the whole film.  Brendan Gleeson, Sean Bean, and Julie Christie were in the movie too, but not for very long.

Great action sequences.  At least 3 or 4 one one fights that rock.  Long running time (2:45), but not too long (it took the Greeks 10 years in Homer).  Mainly I just didn't care about these people (except for Achilles).  There is a thing about movies like this, though, and war movies in general, I think.  For me, when grown men get emotional with one another, I find it fairly moving.  I have a thing about fathers and sons anyway, but when grown men tell each other that they love them, I warm considerably to the action onscreen.

Achilles' Heel

So Troy got bad reviews, but I'm seeing it anyway.