Some Vaguely Interesting (But Not Really) Spider-Man 3 Screenshots

http://media.movies.ign.com/media/041/041073/imgs_1.html

I guess this is their "bullet in the eye"?

So Many Mexicans: An Oscar Story

Oscar Nominations
Not good enough for Best Picture apparently, Pan's Labyrinth (the all-time best movie I've never seen) has picked up six Oscar nominations just days after breaking the language barrier and successfully expanding into the wider U.S. market. For all the nominations, if you missed them everywhere else and got all sweaty and anxious and stumbled here by chance during your frantic search for answers, click HERE to where IMDB's given them all a very nice layout I could never hope to emulate on a blog page that rarely posts my pictures in the right place and makes gigantic gaps between paragraphs that make me spend up to four whole minutes correcting them everytime I post.

As you can see, the nominations are largely as was expected. Of course, there's always something (or usually many things) worth griping about, and I'll pick Borat's nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Okay, it was a funny movie, and that constitutes creative comedic writing. But COME ON. There wasn't even a proper script for the whole movie, probably just a "plan of attack" in terms of narrative and I doubt scripting exceeded funny ways of questioning participants and, later, voice-over (something which should never alone constitute Oscar-calibre writing no matter how clever or funny). Alas, it was Borat's only nomination, so perhaps they simply wanted to not snub it entirely for fear of getting shat on by the press, as would have been inevitable. In fact, forget "perhaps", I'm willing to bet that's EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED. Because the Academy does this every year to some poor movie, throwing in a sympathy vote while not really wanting it to win a damn thing out of fear of... whatever. Last year they had to go a step further and give Brokeback several nominations and even the sympathy Director win (which it deserved anyway) just to make it seem like they were being fair in snubbing it for Best Picture. Everyone watching knew what they'd done, they just couldn't prove it.

So sure it happens all the time, it's just that this Borat case seems to have exposed many Academy members as apparently not knowing what a screenplay is. Odd really. But given Poseidon made it to the big screen, not entirely surprising.

As Before
An unoriginal topic (already covered last week), but worth mentioning twice because this goes beyond discussing just the quality of the show. Basically, Heroes is killing me. I'll get to that in a minute.

First of all I'll ask: how the hell is ths such a popular hit over in the States? It's not that I can't see why people would watch it, which may seem to contradict my previous sentence, but rather the show is, if Monday's episode is anything to go by, moving at the pace of a snail. You know Lost last year? How nothing ever actually happened? Okay, well Lost progressed more in a single second-season flashback than Heroes has in its first three episodes so far, and the most recent episode was, in that respect, completely ridiculous. Oh, and only 39 minutes long, which may have contributed (ever so slightly). But yeah, at the moment it's all just a bunch of disconnected threads waiting way too long to get tied together (which will obviously happen eventually to some degree) meaning we get maybe six or seven minutes of each character's story per episode. And meaning nothing happens unless they force it in ridiculous ways. And boy oh boy do they force it in ridiculous ways. Just because someone can survive absolutely anything, doesn't mean they'd die every fucking day under normal circumstances. For fuck's sake. Claire, who possesses this power, has (in the space of three episodes) head her entire neck twisted around when accidentally hit by a football tackle (uh-huh), and has now had her neck impaled on a spike during a sex attack by a character who made no sense and made one of the shallowest, most stereotypical turns to evil-doer in TV history. What was I saying? Oh yeah: why is show so popular? Well we've established that nothing happens, there are nearly more ads than minutes of show, we barely spend enough time with characters to learn their names and that the show finds ridiculous means to force things to happen to make otherwise dull story threads interesting. What I don't understand is why millions of people have been happy to wait week after week for more of this. But they have. Last night in the States 24 barely beat it in the ratings. And in 24 shit happens all the time. 24 should be Bauer-ing Heroes.

Sound like a show-quality rant? Well it is and it isn't. My question about why the hell so many damn people have to be watching Heroes stems from my frustration at having millions of people see, and subconsciously commit to memory, a plot device I came up with two years ago (when it was original and innovative) which is getting butchered in the interests of shallow Hollywood entertainment. I've often mentioned, here and around, that man-in-a-bear-costume movie I want to make someday. You know, the one that I told you about while you stood there nodding and smiling and thinking to yourself Yeah, good luck with that, or maybe I hope this nutter hasn't got a knife. I'm well aware I'm the only person in the world who thinks this can be a good movie, and that's enough support for me. But anyway, in Heroes the Japanese guy (whose character and story are the only decent parts of the show so far) finds a comic book in the first two episodes (I forget which, they were played back-to-back here) which shows him himself and what's going to happen to him. When the comic book was introduced I was hoping that was it. It didn't seem to have too big a place in the show beyond making the guy want to contact the comic's author and, yes, I thought that was it. Never to be seen again. I'll explain why that left me relieved in a second. But then this third episode aired and took it further. He saw something in the comic book: a girl getting hit by a truck. And he used the book to find the location, find the girl and save the day. Pretty cool plot device.

Yeah, well I've had basically the same thing happen in the first act of the bear movie since April 2005. Main character, we'll call him Bear for now, is a bear wandering the streets of a big city and who essentially (eventually) amounts to a superhero. He stumbles upon a poster in the window of a comic book store. The poster depicts a superhero: a bear in a big city, like him, only our Bear isn't a hero just yet. He goes inside, buys the comic and in the early hours of the next morning is reading a page in which a man walking by on his cellphone gets into an argument with a lady screaming at him from an apartment window several floors up. Then THIS EXACT THING HAPPENS in front of Bear in real life. Next in the comic book: a young woman is followed at a distance by a man in a car, just across the road from the argument moments earlier. In the comic book, the superhero bear character tails them and finds the woman being attacked in an alleyway around the corner, and he steps in to heroically save the day. Bear then looks up from the comic and sees the woman and the car, sure enough, just across the street, and doesn't hesitate in tailing them, convinced that she's in trouble as depicted in the thus-far believable comic book. He find the woman and the man in the alleyway and saves the day. Thus, a hero is born. Of course there's a little more to it than that, and it plays out much less damsel-in-distress-ish than it sounds. You need to understand these events in the context of the character at that point - it's not as shallow, straightforward and simple as I described it, but the other details are beside the point for now. On top of that, the comic book device also forms both a symbolic and physical link to that other film I blogged about a couple of weeks back, Paris. It wasn't just something that happened that could be replaced if someone else did it in the meantime. It was a crucial element. And now the intrigue that goes with seeing such a device play out for the first time, drawing the audience into what amounts to the film's inciting incident, has been royally fucked in the ass by having Heroes expose millions of people to such a plot device already. I'm not saying millions of people would ever see my bear movie, just that enough will have seen Heroes such that my use of the device will be labelled as a rip-off. I can handle coming up with something that I think is original and interesting and then finding out someone else did it forty years ago. Wasn't so original afterall perhaps. But to come up with something, search the net and find no trace of it having been done anywhere, and then have some hack making a shit show, but nonetheless in a position to actually execute the ideas he has, use the same thing a year later in an emphatic wasting of potential is, yes, somewhat frustrating.

Fortunately, Heroes is walking in all the right directions right now toward setting itself up for homage. The main themes of my film, which admittedly took 18 months to figure out and meant the film was for a long while written on instinct, put it in a perfect position such that the comic thing can act, for anyone who's seen the show, as an homage to Heroes to in turn further the themes its trying to explore through contrast. Or something. But I think it can be done. So that way people don't look at the comic device and say "thief" but rather wonder what point's trying to be made. Of course, I'd rather I didn't have to do that and had people think I'd come up with something original and innovative, but it's not an awful second prize I suppose. Maybe. I'll sob for a couple more days and then get over it.

Lemontree
Been down to Murvale Reserve on Monday and had a quick look around the Macleans fields yesterday to figure out how I'm shooting my "forest scene," and I think that while I might need to rely a little on coverage at times just in case, I can probably shoot most of the shots I had planned, which is awesome. So enough worrying about a movie that's years off if I even get to it at all, the news is all good so far for a current, relevant project at least. So far. I won't breathe a sigh of relief yet until certain casting-related things are sorted out. No pressure. Ahem.

A Rare Proper-ish Review, Littered With Crash Comparisons

Babel: A Really Good Film In There Somewhere
Babel is the movie Crash wanted to be, and which Paul Haggis (who I maintain contributed the last half-hour of Casino Royale only) could never write. But while its a more insightful and (no-shit) more subtle film than last year's winner of "Best Picture" at the Oscars and "Most Overrated" the second it was labelled "great" by anyone anywhere, and is helmed by a director who at least has somewhat of an idea of how to handle its subject matter, it has its problems.

I guess the whole web of life thing is getting real old real fast as it becomes a more frequently used device for filmmakers to try to "open our eyes," or perhaps damn us all, in the hope that by giving us a broad enough scope we might see "real life" in there somewhere and find the film important and relatable to the world around us. And it's a shame that Babel furthered that feeling for me when it was one less storyline away from nailing the approach. Magnolia nails it. Crash is at the other end of the spectrum, where the director thinks his audience will buy any number of coincidences and contrivances and eat up any message so long as its force-fed with a flavour-masking dollup of obviousness and a glass of bullshit to wash it all down.

Brad Pitt's Oscar clip

Babel's four storylines begin as follows. (1) An American couple holidaying in Morocco: wife is shot while riding a tour bus. A stray bullet? The work of bandits? Terrorists? They're too far from anyone that can really help so they stop off at some shit-hole third world village and Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt cry a lot. (2) A Moroccan family living out in the middle of nowhere, apparently, with some sheep or goats something. The kids are given a gun to shoot predators, and while playing around with it and testing its range, shoot at a car, and then a tour bus. Oooohhhhh. They hit someone. Who we later find out (but guess immediately anyway) is Cate Blanchett. I didn't ruin it. It's obvious, and it's close to the start. Plus if you've seen a trailer or TV spot you knew already. (3) Back at home, Blanchett/Pitt's kids are with their Mexican nanny. The nanny can't go to her son's wedding because she has to look after the kids. She goes anyway. Obviously, something will therefore go wrong and she will be found out, its just a matter of how much Haggis they throw at us along the way. (4) A deaf Japanese girl finds herself constantly rejected by those around her, and seeks attention.

Inarritu said (according to the booklet thing at the Rialto) that he began filming Babel as a film exploring the barriers between human beings but, through constant rewriting as filming progressed and as the locations they were shooting in continued to open his own eyes to the world around him, became a film about the things which bring us together. Like Crash, cultural barriers are certainly a key focus, but its not simply "everyone's a racist at heart." The Western tourists eager to flee the middle-of-nowhere Moroccon town and leave the wounded Blanchett and her husband to wait for help that may not even be coming are perfectly realistic characters driven by realistic motivations - fearing their surroundings, particularly if the shooting was a deliberate targetted attack, you can't really look at these people and judge them. They're fearful of this landscape. And why wouldn't they be: the first thing the public hears of the shooting is that the Americans are calling it a possible terrorist attack. Possible, sure, but only in the sense that anything's possible. The work of a bullet fired by a couple of kids on the edge of their farmlands, remember. But they have to mention "terrorism" as a possibility. That's the world we live in now, with the Western media's (outside perhaps the BBC) tendency to sensationalise (and American government and military's tendency to over-react) no doubt contributing to the divide between the Western world and the third-world as it becames a more foreign and fearful place. Inarritu draws attention to this; America's trigger-happy public assessment of a situation they as yet know nothing about is met with a cold reception from the Moroccan government, claiming to have largely eradicated terrorist cells in the country, frustrated no doubt to be simply thrown into the mix as another dangerous third-world country particularly given the inevitable damage to their image and, consequently, tourism industry. This political locking of horns sees Blanchett's shooting become a worldwide news event before help has even arrived. And that help's been held-up now too; the American helicopter's not getting clearence from the Moroccans because of the debacle. So yeah, she's lying there, bleeding away, while the Americans do their "rabble, rabble!" South Park thing. And I was sitting there thinking: that's so true.

But this movie isn't simply politically motivated. Like I say, there is a broader theme here and the Blanchett/Pitt story is just one angle from which it's approached.

The Japanese story seems quite far-removed at first, and indeed while many may look at this thread and ask "what's the point?" or "how does this connect", I would argue that this is part of the point. The story is connected in a way that could be looked at as almost being Crash-ridiculous; the gun used to shoot Blanchett and Pitt was sold to the boys' father by a guy who received it as a gift from a Japanese hunter he guided several years earlier. And yeah, that Japanese hunter is the father of the deaf girl who stars in the Japanese story. How dare this movie use a silly string of events to justify putting this story on screen, you ask? I hope you didn't, because many people have and they seem to be in the mindset that the connection is ridiculous just because it sounds like it should be. But the connection isn't the point. It's not as if the story at the other end is some other International crisis and that they're connected in such a way would be unlikely and ludicrous. It's Inarritu saying that this is just one of those things happening in some part of the world; this character could be that person connected in that way because that person could be anybody. It's a smaller-scope story, like that of the boys responsible for the shooting in Morocco. I feel the need to emphasise this because I've read the silly-connection criticism everywhere and it's frustratingly moronic.

The Japanese story, one not of cultural clashes but of a girl facing barriers within her own society, eventually emerges as perhaps the strongest element of the film, and is suitably chosen to end the film (in a fairly breathtaking way). As with the story of the boys responsible for the shooting, which as I say is quite straightforward storywise, I won't elaborate too much here because doing so would ruin a few things worth discovering for yourself.

It's not that the film shines throughout. You could pick weak points in any of these stories. But the weakest is undoubtedly the Mexico storyline, the one where the nanny takes the American kids with her to her son's wedding. Now we're fully into Crash territory. It's not simply that the story resembles Crash thematically, which it does (it still does it far better), it's just that now I too have to be critical of the connection here. Shortly after having his wife shot while on holiday, back home Pitt's kids end up involved in a rather eyebrow-raising police chase that seemed a tad what-the-fuck-ish, and soon find themselves wandering dehydrated through the desert, all setting-up for a tragic set of cirucmstances faced by the nanny with the film, in the process, being insightful. You've got to be shitting me. Thing is, I liked what they did with the story; but while the "point" was strong, the means of getting there really let this movie down. It seemed way too contrived that this happened too. But fortunately, I can therefore only label one quarter of this movie as such, whereas with Crash it was the entire thing. And there really are some strong points worth giving credit for too; the use of time for example is superb. We learn of what happens to Blanchett in the days after her shooting not simply by time-lapsing five days but by setting the Japanese story, playing out intercut with the others, five days later. And other stories are set a day or two apart too to provide different perspectives on events also, something the film does effectively.

I said before that this film was a decent pick at the Globes for Best Drama, and I suppose it is - it's far better than Crash, and that won the Oscar. But I should also add that I made that comment within the context of expectation. In other words, for an awards show they could have picked a lot worse. I don't think Babel is brilliant filmmaking. At times it is, certainly, but its one of those flawed films that could undoubtedly have been tighter. The good thing is that if you watch movies a lot (like I do) you let yourself subconciously give films a little bit of room to make mistakes without noticing them too much or letting them hinder your enjoyment - until, that is, said-film crosses the line (like many films do). Well, Babel doesn't really cross that line too often, so I could appreciate it for what it was and it gets a thumbs up from me. Certainly worth your time, unless you're dying of cancer and have like two weeks to live.

Remind Me Not To Bother Next Year

How Irony-y
Just a minute ago, in the process of removing something stuck between my teeth using a toothpick, the end of the toothpick snapped off and became stuck between my teeth.

Heroes, Fugliness & Golden Balls. And By Balls, I Mean Artistic Vision.
Quite an interesting few days on the entertainment front I guess, over here at least. Heroes and Ugly Betty, two of the highest-rating and most acclaimed shows of the 06-07 U.S. television season debuted on NZ screens, followed by the Golden Globes on Tuesday night. Heroes in my mind came off as a disjointed show with good ideas and no idea how to execute them, but I'll give it time to find its feet; afterall, Prison Break initially seemed like a superficial Shawshank knockoff right down to the character types (Hadley=Bellick, Bogs=T-Bag, Brooks Hatlen=Westmoreland) and protagonist-warden relationship, and that show's turned out more than okay. Ugly Betty? Could be decent I guess. Seemed likable, even if the pilot's resolution was as cliched and predictable (as well as somewhat not-at-all-believable) as hell.

More interestingly, the Golden Globes kicked off the major awards season. Did I say more interestingly? Because the dull bastard child of the Oscars and Emmys just got duller. Hampered by overly long speeches from overly uninteresting "Oh wow! Must thank everyone"ers and the lack of a host, the show remained watchable if only due to the large proportion of British Globe-winners, because while the Yanks kept going up and listing every name in the phone book while doing their best not to faint with surprise, it seemed like every British recipient had something amusing to say and wasn't really taking it all that seriously because, you know, the awards are afterall a load of nonsense. Until at least, as Bill Nighy commented with a sly grin, you win one: then they suddenly seem "so real and meaningful."

The worst crimes of the night came in the major categories at the end which were not only rushed because they'd let everyone, mostly Warren Beatty, talk too long, and were consequently reduced to quick anti-climactic buzzkilling roll-calls of nominees, but were also scarred by Oscar-syndrome at times, especially in the Comedy/Musical category where the best four (consensus-wise) were all overlooked in favour of Oscar-bait Dreamgirls (triumphing in its category over the likes of Little Miss Sunshine and Thank You For Smoking because its "that type of movie" and is also the only one currently in cinemas, which no doubt earned it the all-important retirement-home vote by being the only film most aging critics would have remembered). I can live with Babel taking home Drama; I've always thought awarding zero, one or multiple films in any given year makes more sense (and will never happen) because the "best" film in one year is often the 6th best the next year - i.e. there's no quality standard, rendering the award meaningless beyond an intra-annual comparison - but Babel was at least "at that standard" even though many will probably argue The Queen and The Departed, neither of which I've yet seen, are better and should have taken home the globe if only one is up for grabs. But well done to Babel, or something.

At the Globes they inevitably try to stuff too much into one evening, mainly because the Hollywood Foreign Press knows that without the TV-Cinema hybrid hook they'd be exposed for the redundant pre-Oscar prediction ceremony that it really is; as it happens, nobody seems willing to publicly point out that awarding TV shows barely half-way through their seasons is stupid and pointless, and so the show lives on for another year. So with the lettuce already overflowing from between its one-too-many buns, what you don't get then is that all-important, time-consuming ingredient: the host. The Oscars are the Oscars for a lot of reasons, but its with a strong host and presenting line-up that the show usually ends up more worthwhile for the creativity on-stage than for that which the show's celebrating off it. Who can forget Ben Stiller's "green screen" stunt last year? If you missed it, it's worth a look - possibly the best thing to happen to the Oscars in years. Can't find it on YouTube myself.

Yeah, well this year at the Globes he stood there and announced the nominees and looked bored. And strangely old. In fact, only Tom Hanks's "ballsy" Beatty presentation kicked any kind of ass.

Anyways, the good news is that the next lot of major awards will be at the BAFTAs, a show which inevitably kicks all kinds of ass from a variety of continents because it's crawling with British people who, as we have already established, are entertaining by nature. What's more, the BAFTAs award movies for "being good". Yeah, that old philosophy.

"Pirates" Upgrades Its Wardobe Department

Following on from a partial script-leak a few weeks back, the latest cat to escape from POTC3's rather porous bag has come in the form of a batch of character posters showcasing a stylish new look... of sorts. At World's End and Dead Man's Chest were shot together and will probably look very much the same (by comparison it took two years between films plus Joel Schumacher before Batman's infamous nipple-suit arrived on the scene) but this radical departure from the colourful marketing approach of the last two films is at the very least intriguing if it's any indication of what to expect from the film itself.