Childs Play

I recently watched all the 'Childs Play'/Chucky movies. At the same time last year I watched all the 'Saw' movies in one weekend but have since forgotten a lot of how I felt about them so I figured I’d write down my thoughts on these while it was still fresh.

*spoilers*

1 - Childs Play

Where does he come from?

He was a serial killer who used voodoo to put his soul into a doll.

I liked this one a lot. It kinda reminded me of 'The Babadook' while watching it as it’s about a single mom taking care of a kid and the kid keeps talking about a weird supernatural thing and for a while you don’t really know if it’s real or not. Except Chucky is really well known now and has been in a bunch of movies so we all know he’s real. I guess if they ever make 5 sequels to 'The Babadook' people looking back at the first film will say the same thing.

This one works for the simple fact that it has good old fashioned tension. Even if you do know that Chucky is alive there’s a lot of scenes where you don’t know if and when he’ll do something. Once he gets really active and starts talking though I liked it a lot less. He screams *a lot* and runs his mouth off and says bitch a lot (I also watched through the nightmare on elm street movies so i’m really hearing bitch a lot these days).

Anyways he gets burned and decapitated and dismembered and shot and is killed. Apparently the director wanted to make sure Chucky was as dead as possible to make sure there’d be no way for him to come back for a sequel but when he showed the movie to someone they were like “it’s smart how you left it open for a sequel”. Oh dear!

2 - Childs Play 2

How does he come back?

The original doll is rebuilt in order to find out if it had any bugs. Then there’s electricity or something and he’s alive again

This one is the opposite of the first in that the first half is not so good but the end is fantastic. For the first half it’s more of the same with Chucky once again trying to get into the body of Andy (the kid from the first one).

Where this really comes alive though is when they go into the factory where they make all the good guy dolls. Chucky gets maimed and gets a bunch of acid (i think) poured on him. I don’t like Chucky too much so I loved seeing him get hurt so much.

3 - Childs Play 3

How does he come back?

The parts of the doll get thrown in to a vat and melted down to make more dolls. A bunch of his blood gets mixed in and one of the new dolls ends up with his soul in it again. I think that’s what it is anyway, it’s actually kinda confusing

This one is not so good but watching it made me realise what my idea of a perfect Chucky movie is. He spends too much of these movies either yelling a bunch (not scary) or having the upper hand. He’s a doll but he still manages to kill people pretty easily. He also seems to spend a lot of time pointing a gun or knife at people and getting them to just carry him around. What I want is more inconveniencing. There’s a great bit in this one where he gets thrown into a garbage truck and yells out ‘SHIT’ in the same way he yells everything and it was hilarious! If he’s going to be so loud and angry all the time he should be spending the whole movie having shit go wrong for him and getting more and more frustrated.

That bit with the garbage truck is one of the only things I liked in this one. There’s also a great bit where a guy randomly jumps on a grenade and blows up. It’s fantastic.

Continuity-wise it also follows Andy but this time he’s played by a different actor. Chucky gets half his face sliced off and then dropped into a fan.

4 - Bride of Chucky

My favourite one! Just as I was getting sick of how much he had the upper hand his ex-girlfriend comes along and locks him in a cage! Yay!

How does he come back?

His ex, Tiffany, pays off a guard to bring her the remains of the doll from the last movie. She stitches it back up and uses voodoo to bring him back to life. He now has scars and stuff on his face.

I loved this one, it takes a turn into comedy and pulls it off really well. Not everything is done so well, the stuff with the human people isn’t as good. They set up this idea that a couple each think the other is responsible for all the killings but not enough is done with it and just when it gets really interesting it stops. I also like how at the end Chucky flat out says it doesn’t matter if he dies at the end since he always comes back anyway.

5 - Seed of Chucky

The worst. This is really bad. They slide even more into comedy but also in a way that isn’t funny.

How does he come back?

A Chucky and Tiffany doll have been made for a movie (or maybe the old dolls have been rebuilt into these animatronics?). Their son uses a voodoo amulet to bring them to life.

I don’t have a whole lot else to say about this one. It’s garbage. The worst part is when he kills a Britney Spears look-alike and says “oops I did it again”. I’m sure that was real hilarious in 2003 but it’s 2015 now and we expect our comedy to be a bit more sophisticated.

For the purposes of talking about the next one though it’s worth talking about how it ends. The whole series Chucky (and later Tiffany too) has been trying to get back into a human body. In this they are ready to do it but Chucky decides he refers being a doll now. Tiffany and the kid get put back into human form and Chucky is killed off, waiting to return later.

6 - Curse of Chucky

How does he come back?

He just arrives in the mail

I really liked this one a lot. They forget all the comedy and go back to basics. This is a lot like the first one where for a long time it’s just a kid with a doll and the doll barely does anything. It also repeats something I really like from the first movie where the kid is talking to Chucky and holding  the doll up to her ears as if he’s whispering to her. We don’t hear anything Chucky says so we don’t know if he’s actually talking to her all the time or if it’s just typical kid acting like their doll is alive stuff. There’s also a great scene where Chucky puts rat poison in one persons food and we have a long scene where everyone is sitting around eating but we don’t know where the poison is.

At one point I got really worried because it turned out someone but a nanny-cam in Chucky and I was worried it would turn into a found footage movie but it doesn’t! Crises averted.

This movie is super interesting in how it goes back to being like the original movie after the series had been shifted towards comedy. There’s often the idea that once you start steering something in one direction that you can’t steer it back. Part of it is to do with audience expectations, if more people like funny Chucky maybe they’ll be disappointed with scary Chucky. Plus there’s the fact that if you start doing comedy and making fun of a character then people won’t take them seriously when you want them too. I’m currently almost done watching the elm street movies (stay tuned) and they have a similar thing. Freddy even more so because he was even more disturbing originally than Chucky was and got even more famous. Kids dress up as Freddy for halloween now (more so than Chucky) so can you even make him scary any more? (the elm street movies actually make this part of the text at one point. Again, stay tuned). In this case it worked really well. Turns out all you need is good old fashioned good filmmaking.

What made this series interesting as a whole is the sense of continuity. They were all written by the same guy (Don Mancini) and he directed the last two. The continuity stays pretty tight and brings back a lot of the same actors (apart from 'Childs Play 3' which recast Andy). The rigid continuity is one of the things I really liked about the 'Saw' movies (and they stick to it so much it’s almost impossible to just casually watch most of the later 'Saw' movies).

With curse it goes back to basics so much you can’t even tell if it’s a remake or not for a while. It turns out it’s not a remake though and it made me so happy to see that. One thing that bothered me though is that the version I watched was the regular version and the unrated version has an extra scene after the credits. The scene has nothing in it that would need to be cut and I had to watch it on youtube. It’s a shame because it’s kind of the perfect ending to a marathon of these movies.

Spectre

*Spoilers*

I seemed to be one of the few people that didn’t like ‘Skyfall’ that much. Everyone loved it when it came out but it does look some people have cooled on it since. Unfortunately ‘Spectre’ seems to have a lot of the same problems and I liked it even less.

One of the biggest problems is that they don’t really seem like they know what to do with Bond anymore. That’s pretty understandable. It’s something that just happens when you are so influential and going on for so long, the things you were known for and great at will get divided up and specialised in and make it harder and harder for you to stand out amongst all the competition you inspired (see also The Simpsons). For example the Bond movies used to be trailblazers in practical stunts but now you have the Fast and Furious franchise focusing on car stunts and the Mission Impossible franchise has Tom Cruise focusing on doing more and more impressive physical stunts. So they can’t compete on stunts.

There’s also the problem that the character was created over 60 years ago and has a long history of sexism (among other things) and as more and more time goes by it’s something that will stand out more and more and less and less possible to ignore.

They meet those problems face on by making them part of the story and part of the characterisation now. Bond is a broken man who doesn’t really fit into society. His orphan backstory has been pushed to the forefront and become part of the plot instead of just backstory.  He is supposedly haunted by all the death that has followed him and is his casual sleeping around comes from his numbness after the loss of Vesper. The problem with doing this is that it’s also still a Bond movie and as much as they try to drill into the character to get into a realistic reason for why a man would be like this there is also another answer to every question about why is he like this and it’s ‘because he’s James Bond’.

Why does he sleep around? Because he’s James Bond. Why is such an effective killer? Because he’s James Bond. Why is he always able to just brush over any threat with a joke? Because he’s James Bond? Why is it okay to have a spy just going around killing people so willy nilly? Because this spy is James Bond, haven’t you heard of him?

‘The Dark Knight’ had the same problem. Any time they tried to get close to getting into Batman’s head it was undercut by the fact that the answer to any question about why Batman does anything is ‘because this is a movie about Batman and this is what Batman does’ and it starts getting a bit ridiculous once it starts becoming a plot point.

It’s a half measure. The makers of the film want you to think that they’ve thought about all of this, all about the realistic aspects of it and what Bond would be like in real life and as a real person but they’ve only gone half way. They can’t go the full way because they have a Bond movie to make. The supposed realism is undercut by the inherent silliness and the fun stuff is undercut by the attempts to ground it. Even with the main song, which *a lot* of people don’t like I like it on it’s own but the biggest problem I have with it is that it suggests a level of melancholy that the movie doesn’t live up to. They even have the movie shot by the guy that did ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’ and it looks good but it’ll never be anywhere near the kind of movie ‘Tinker Tailor’ is.
(For the record I think ‘Casino Royale’ did navigate this balance incredibly well so it’s not impossible just very difficult.)


Skyfall and Spectre literally have made it part of the plot the fact that Bond’s one-man-army style is unrealistic and would incur a whole bunch of red tape and is kinda outdated in the world of drones. But to move away from that or to address it too much would also stop Bond form being Bond and they can’t have that so they have to make sure Bond is on the right side. M in Skyfall and the new M in Spectre both give speeches about how important it is that Bond keep being able to do what he does. M grounds Bond at the start for going rouge so Bond just continues to go rogue until he is proven right and M likes him again. M Q and Moneypenny are just doing their jobs but we need the audience to like them so we can’t dare have them go against Bond so they all help him out in the end. The guy that was trying to close down the 00 program? Oh it turns out he was working for the main villain so we can just kill him now.


And oh boy lets talk about the bad guy.

Part of the weird limbo the Bond franchise has found itself in is that there is a pressure to stay current. Unfortunately they seem to have just been ripping off current trends or other popular movies. First it was the Bourne movies, then The Dark Knight (right down to the villain letting himself get captured. Remember when every second movie did that?) now it’s the trend of making the world smaller and adding more and more connections between characters and making stuff about destiny. (Which arguably actually started with ‘Batman’ back in 1989 but it seems to be becoming more and more popular.

I still don’t fully get why so many movies are going to this well. I’ve heard a theory that it comes from a pressure to impress. As movie goers become more and more savvy they also start going into movies to ‘compete’ with them. They are competing to be smarter than the movie, to see if they can spot plot holes or mistakes to see if they can figure things out before the movie tell them (this isn’t a good way to watch movies by the way.) So the writer feels the need to impress the audience. They want to be able to point at all the threads in the movie and say “look at the intricate web I have weaved. See how it all fits together? Look how smart I am!” It never works the way the writer wants it to though.

Spectre goes with the frankly bizarre idea that Bond and Blofeld were kinda brothers. Like, what? It’s even weirder considering that Skyfall did this on a thematic level with Bond and Silva both competing for the approval of ‘mom’ (M). Did they just see how well people reacted to that and think “well if they liked us doing it on a thematic level they’ll LOVE if we do it literally”. I seriously don’t understand what they thought it added to the story or to the characters. I also just realised that it’s the same plot as Austin Powers 3 so I guess the Bond franchise is ripping off Austin Powers now.

They also reveal that Blofeld was responsible for killing all the women in Bond’s life (“I’m the architect of all your pain) and well I don’t think that works either. I did once see a thing a comics writer said where he was talking about writing for Superman and how when you have Superman as an all powerful god and Lex Luther as just a mortal man it becomes hard to have Luthor as a credible threat. His solution was to have it so that everything bad that happened to Superman could be traced back to Luthor. That’s how you make him a genuine threat. I like that idea so maybe the fact that it don’t seem to work in Spectre was they mishandled it or maybe I was still too distracted by the fact that they were fucking brothers.

One thing I will say I kinda like about the brothers angle is that considering Bond has always meant to be a indulgent wish-fulfilment character the fact that Blofeld’s back story comes down to ‘his father met Bond and Bond was just SO AWESOME that his father just didn’t like him anymore’ is kinda hilarious. Now that’s a movie I’d like to see; Bond just keeps going around accidentally breaking up families because he just can’t help being awesome.

July 2015 Watched/Read

Watched/Read July 2015

Things got pretty busy in work this month so there isn’t a whole lot on the list. I only watched 8 movies all month! Pretty sure that’s a record for me.

Movies

Terminator Genisys

This and Jurassic World are both sequels that came out this year that were terrible but in different ways. TG was dull and pointless but at least had some level of consistency and seemed like it was given a polish by someone who actually knows how to construct a script. JW has more dumb fun moments but is way too inconsistent and unfocused to be able to pay any of it off. They both needed to learn a little from each other, if this had a little more crazy and JW had a little more focus they both could have been a lot better. At the very least more watchable.

Minions

I’ve forgotten a lot of this but I remember it being kinda fun. They’re minions. If you like them you’ll like this.

Termintor Salvation

I went back to re-watch this after watching Genisys and I kinda like it. Or maybe I just appreciate it. It has problems but I really like that it’s not just trying to be T2 again like all the other sequels. I wish they did more stuff like this where there’s no time travel or a bunch of Arnies everywhere and it’s just telling it’s own story. They should do more sequels like this and even go further and not even bother with the Conor family.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Speaking of sequels that nobody likes…I only saw this once before on a plane a few years ago. Also not that bad! There’s defiantly some bad stuff in here (I don’t think the fridge is that bad either. Sue me). I heard someone say that the films worst problems come from Spielberg ignoring his own instincts to pander to fans. Maybe they have a point but also maybe a lot of stuff is Lucas’s fault.

Ant Man

Loved it! So refreshing to have something so small (har har) after what Marvel have usually been doing. A friend of mine said he preferred the bigger scale stuff like Winter Soldier but I don’t. I though WS was pretty exciting at the time but then they just went back on everything. What’s the point of destroying SHEILD and having Nick Fury go into hiding if he can just show up in a helicarrier two movies later? I get that it’s a comic and that the basic rule is that nothing really changes but don’t waste my time by pretending that stuff is actually changing if it isn’t. Anyway, that’s the benefit of keeping the stakes small, it doesn’t matter if they’re bullshit! That might come off as kinda cynical but I also like this movie for being sweet and funny and having unique action scenes and doing what Marvel does best in terms of how well is deals with character.

Inside Out

This is not just the best movie Pixar has done, not just one of the best movies I’ve seen so far this year but one of the greatest movies I have ever seen full stop. I think it’s a masterpiece. For a while now I’ve believed that the line between intelligence and genius is in the difference between being able to understand something vs. being able to explain it. If that’s the case than this is a legitimate work of genius, something that takes something complex (emotions) says something incredibly smart about it (the importance of sadness) and not only makes it accessible but makes it accessible to children all the while being a funny, tragic, exciting and entertaining piece of cinema. 

There’s already stories out there about how watching this movie has completely changed and improved the way some people are able to talk to their kids about their emotions. I’ve heard stories about people that had a full on existential crises watching this. People that completely changed the way they think after watching this. It’s even been helping adults work out the way they think and process their emotions. 

If art is about making an impression on someone then the highest form of art has the power to change how someone thinks for the better and how they relate to themselves and the world. ‘Inside Out' can do that, it has done that and the world is all the better for it existing.

Lava

This is the short that played before ‘Inside Out’. It’s an absolute piece of fucking shit. It’s awful. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking. Blue Umbrella was pretty bad, I don’t even know what the fuck this was supposed to be.

Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation

I loved the hell out of the last MI and this is about on par with it. There’s nothing here as good as the Dubai sequence but it’s a better overall movie and some amazingly well done action in it. Between this, Fury Road and Furious 7 we were pretty spoiled for great action filmmaking this year. Real top tier stuff. I honestly don’t know why people complain so much about the state of movies these days. People are dumb. Some of the best stuff came out this year.

Books/Comics

Screenwriting 101 - Filmcrithulk

I already wrote about this book (here) but I ended up reading it again (for the 3rd or 4th time, I lost track). It’s great, I love it and there’s there’s loads of great stuff in here I feel is worth revisiting.

Nimona - Noelle Stevenson

This is a great little comic written and drawn by Noelle Stevenson. It’s about a spunky girl who can shape-shift and decides she’s going to be a villains sidekick. I’m not going to reveal any more about the plot but it’s funny and sweet and I love the art style. Highly recommended.

I Should Just Not - Britt Hayes

I picked this up because it’s written by a film critic whose work I like a lot. It’s a book about a year in her life where she was single and ends up going on a run of really bad dates. It’s at times funny, at times kinda scary, and depending on who you are might even be pretty revealing. You can read it in one sitting and you could do much worse.

Tomorrowland: A World Beyond (2015)

I absolutely couldn’t get over the ending of Tomorrowland so I’m going to write about it and the events of the movie leading up to it. As in, the whole movie. 

SPOILER ALERT FOR THE WHOLE MOVIE!

We begin with George Clooney as a kid but not really, we actually begin with adult George Clooney and adult Britt Robinson talking to the camera. They bicker and stuff as they try to begin the story. Then they begin the story and it’s about kid George Clooney who invented a jet pack and shows it to Hugh Laurie. Laurie is NOT IMPRESSED though because it doesn’t work and he says it doesn’t have a function. Kid Clooney tries to explain that if people see a working jet pack it’ll fill them with optimism and inspiration and make them feel that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. That’s not enough for Laurie though. Apparently neither is the fact that it’s a form of transportation?

Luckily Kid Clooney impresses a little robot girl called Athena and she brings him to TOMORROWLAND. This is where the movie starts getting kinda messed up. The whole idea of Tomorrowland is that all the best and brightest people formed a place in an other dimension where they are free to invent and create and aren’t bogged down by politics and bureaucracy and stuff. They invent all kinds of amazing stuff that fully humanoid robots and interstellar travel and they have a thing you can drink every day that stops you ageing. Not for sharing though. Nope. Only the BEST people are allowed to go to Tomorrowland and all the other plebs can stay on earth and not avail of any of the cool stuff. You’re just going to have to get old like a BIG STUPID LOSER. At one point it’s mentioned there was a rumour that it was going to be opened to the public but it didn’t happen and I’ll get into that in a bit later.

Then we begin again (after more bickering) with Britt Robinson. Expect first they start with her as a kid too. Then there’s more bickering and then it begins proper with her as a teenager. She’s a big ole optimist. She doesn’t like when the teachers at school talk about the world going to shit. “What can we do to fix it?” she asks. Nobody else can think to ask that question but her by the way. It’s explained that the thing that makes her special is that she’s so optimistic it could save the world. She has a 78% rating on some kind of dumb scale that isn’t explained. It means she’s the most special. Clooney only got a 40-something% rating so that’s why she’s the lead and he’s not I guess.

A bunch of stuff happens involving robots and a booby-trapped house and eventually Britt, Clooney and Robot Girl Athena end up going to Tomorrowland. I mean it when I say eventually by the way. I skipped over SO MUCH POINTLESS STUFF. We’re literally at the end of the movie now. No kidding. There’s like 20 minutes to go and we’ve only just reached Tomorrowland and we’re only now about to be introduced to the villain and the main macguffin. Most of what I skipped over is just driving in a car and having conversations about nothing. It’s the typical Lindelof conversations of: 

- “Tell me the answer! Explain This” 

- “Nah”
-“Come oooon”

- “Okay, it’s because he got kicked out. NO! I’VE SAID TOO MUCH I MUST STOP”

- “Kicked out for what?”
-“What? Nothing…”

Here’s the thing though, when they get to Tomorrowland  IT. IS. GONE. TO. SHIT. Apparently everything there gave up or stayed indoors or whatever. it’s not explained why though. Why is the place in ruins? I think I might know but I need to catch you guys up on the timeline of events first.

So here’s what happened.

• Kid Clooney arrives in Tomorrowland
• Clooney invents a machine called ‘The Monitor’ that can predict the future. The machine predicts that the Earth (but not Tomorrowland) would be destroyed in the future. There is an exact date and time.
• Clooney gets kicked out of Tomorrowland for inventing it. Not really explained why that was an exile-able offence though.
• Hugh Laurie wants to warn Earth of the impeding doom but knows he couldn’t convince people without evidence so he uses ‘The Monitor’ to project images of Earth’s destruction straight into people’s heads to warn them.
• To Laurie’s shock and dismay instead of scaring the people of Earth into doing something about the destruction the people of earth start putting those images of the apocalypse into all our culture and embracing it. Basically any media featuring mass destruction or apocalyptic stuff was inspired by The Monitor feeding it into our brains. I guess this means we have the monitor to thank for ‘Mad Max:Fury Road’ so thanks!
• ?
• TOMORROWLAND GOES TO SHIT FOR SOME REASON

That last point is where it gets confusing. Laurie makes it clear that only Earth will be destroyed, not Tomorrowland. It’s already been established that Tomorrowland doesn’t really give a shit about Earth or anyone on it that isn’t a genius inventor or creative like they are. So why go to shit? Honestly, I think I know the answer. They love feeling smug and superior to all the normies on Earth but with Earth gone they don’t have anyone to feel superior to. What’s the point of being able to go to space and not age and fly around on jet packs if you can’t laugh about all the dumb old people who are stuck on the ground like a big bunch of idiots.

Britt realised that The Monitor is actually what will lead to Earth’s destruction. Laurie’s attempt to project the images into people’s brains actually caused so much despair that everyone on Earth lost hope and closed down the space program and will eventually nuke each other. Doesn’t explain why the people of Tomorrowland lost hope though!

It also gets into something Bird seems to believe which is that the current popularity of dystopian fiction will eventually lead us to have a shitty future. It’s an interesting idea but it’s not one I agree with. You could make just as much a convincing argument that uplifting fiction is just as harmful because it can placate people or that happy endings and having characters change and become better people can give you vicarious catharsis in a way that can lead you to not change and become a better person in real life. Hell, just recently Simon Pegg spoke out against the popularity of all the nostalgia driven properties and the potential dangers of that and made some pretty great points.

Anyway Laurie is killed and The Monitor is destroyed and everything is good again. The world starts being filled with more hope. Tomorrowland gets fixed up and they start opening it up to the world! HA HA NO THEY DON’T. Fuck sharing. Clooney and Britt are in charge now and they decide to just keep on only inviting the very best most special people. If you’re reading this it means you’re not in Tomorrowland and in that case THOUGH SHIT! NO JET PACK FOR YOU! ENJOY GETTING OLD AND WALKING ON YOUR DUMB LEGS YA BIG LOSER!

The VES Handbook of Visual Effects

Books on Film

The VES Handbook of Visual Effects
Edited by Jeffrey A. Okun &  Susan Zwerman

Unlike the last book I talked about this one is long (1138 pages) and also kinda expensive (a new copy is about £40 on Amazon). I’d also call it essential reading for a lot of people, in this case people interested in VFX and also directing.

There’s the thing I see happen a lot where directors spend time learning all this different stuff about filmmaking and become experts on cinematography and editing and sometimes sound but they almost always ignore the visual effects side. I never understood it. You can even tell how much a filmmaker knows about something by watching their films. You could have the best DP in the world but if the director doesn’t know a thing about putting shots together there’ll be a big difference between what their film will look like and a director who does know. Same with anything else. Same with VFX. Not only that but directors that come from a background in VFX like Neil Blomkamp or Gareth Evans are able to bring in effects laden movies on a much smaller budget than others. 

I’ve even seen this happen on stuff I’ve worked on. I have nothing but respect for the people I’ve worked with and I’m thankful for the work I’ve gotten but sometimes things swing towards wanting stuff that is almost impossible to do or they play it so safe in what they ask for that how it’s shot is kinda unremarkable. I do what I can to advise them on how best to shoot it but I can’t help but wonder what would happen if they knew as much as I did. Not to mention that if a writer/directer knew how to do VFX they could develop the VFX and write at the same time in a way that they could complement each other (that’s how District 9 was made btw). And yeah, I know what you’re saying “It’s the VFX artist’s job to do what the director wants” and that’s true it is (and most of what I’ve learned came from a director asking for something that I then had to figure out how to pull off) but depending on what kind of budget you’re working on it’s not always possible to shoot for the moon. The flip side is that just because you don’t have a lot of resources doesn’t mean the project can’t have any effects and you’d be surprised at the kind of stuff that is relatively simple but can still add a lot.

It’s one of the pieces of advise I’d give to someone interested in directing that I don’t see being said anywhere else. Learn something about VFX. This book is a good place to start and also try and get your hands on something like After Effects or Nuke and do a bunch of tutorials and help yourself get a better understanding of it all. 

I’ve heard some people say that this book can be a little dense and overwhelming for anyone that comes to it with zero knowledge of VFX. I already knew a bunch when I first read this so I can’t comment on what it would be like approaching it fresh but I do know that I loved this book and think everyone interested in filmmaking and VFX should read it.

In the Blink of an Eye

Books on Film

In The Blink of an Eye

by Walter Murch

Walter Murch was an editor on ‘Apocalypse Now’, ‘The Conversation’, ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley’ and a bunch of others. This book is based on a lecture he gave on editing.

It’s a short book (146 pages) and only about half of it is based on the lecture. The second half is about his thoughts on moving over to digital editing. Despite the short length I’d still call it essential reading for anyone interested in filmmaking.

I saw one review on Amazon where someone was complaining that it doesn’t actually teach anything about editing apart from ‘one trick’. That’s a complete misreading of it though. He’s not trying to teach a bunch of editing ‘tricks’ but talking about an overall philosophy and I’d say the book is probably more valuable to a director or DP than to an editor.

The book is short so I can’t really get into too much detail so I’ll end by saying I loved this book and consider it essential. Buy it!

Screenwriting 101 Film Crit Hulk

Books on Film

Screenwriting 101

Film Crit Hulk

What kind of name is ‘Film Crit Hulk’?

Okay so, this always leads to an awkward introduction. This guy is easily my favourite person writing about movies right now. He works in the film industry but can’t reveal who he is so he writes anonymously under the guise of The Incredible Hulk. This includes writing in ALL CAPS and also kinda writing in ‘Hulk Speak’. He’s pretty eloquent though and at this point the hulk speak is pretty much just referring to himself in the third person. If you think being eloquent goes against the Hulk persona though, it doesn’t. Read up on the comics ;)

He also has a good reason for writing like that in that it effects how people actually take in what he’s saying. Without getting too much into it what ends up happening is that people pay more attention to the text (instead of just skimming) and they engage with the actual ideas more than how it’s written. Also, just the very idea of having a character known for being a giant rage monster advocate for sincerity and humanity and being nice and cuddly effects how people view things in terms of what’s on the surface and what’s underneath.

The writing can seem a bit much to take in at first (his articles are also super long) but I’ve been reading his stuff for years now and I can read his stuff so easily now I don’t even notice the style. I can easily read his stuff for hours at a time and often do just re-read a bunch of his articles in a row.

So anyway, what’s the book about?

It’s about screenwriting! It’s also very much about storytelling in general. A huge section of the book just deals with what most other screenwriting books don’t even bother with; what even is a story? Why do we tell them? How do you find a story to tell?

Other books, and screenwriting advice in general can also end up giving you a lot of ‘rules’. “Here’s the structure you need to follow. Here’s what you have to do. Here’s what you absolutely aren’t allowed to put in a script.” It’s all bullshit of course. Just look at any interview with a working screenwriter where any of these rules come up and they just laugh them off. Some people even try to claim they’re not telling you what rules to follow but giving you ‘principles’. “I’m not saying you *have* to do it like this, but all these successful films seem to follow this rule so…” They usually don’t give you a good reason for *why* to follow these principles except to point out a bunch of good movies that seem to follow them or to just shrug and say “hey, they just *work*”

Enter Hulk. He spends a good part of the book just tackling two of the most common things that screenwriters are told to follow ‘Three Act Structure’ and ‘The Heroes Journey’. He actually takes them apart, dealing with how they actually work and what effect they have on a story. His plan is take stuff that often end up becoming restrictive and instead make them freeing.

There’s a lot more too! It’s honestly the best thing about writing I’ve ever read and I’d call it essential reading for anyone interested in writing or filmmaking. I’d even recommend it to anyone that is just interested in movies in general. It really is great and I’ve read it 3 times since I picked it up just over a year ago (I even read it twice in the past 3 months!)

What a minute Paul, you’re not a working screenwriter! How can you know that this is better than any other book about writing? If something like ‘Save The Cat’ speaks just as confidently as this Hulk guy how can you know to recommend one over the other? Even if Hulk really does work in the industry how you know he knows what he’s talking about?

Well, I’ve been interested in writing and specifically screenwriting for years now and I’ve been paying attention to what kind of advice people have been giving about it for over 10 years now. If you pay attention that long and you specifically listen to the differences between what working writers say and what ‘script gurus’ say then you start seeing patterns. A lot of it comes down to aforementioned ‘rules’ and ‘principles’ and how they are talked about. Any ‘rule’ or ‘guideline’ should only exist to serve the story you are telling. It shouldn’t be just there because it ‘just works’ or whatever. You start learning the difference between actual advice and what’s essentially the writing version of snake oil buzzwords. Plus ‘Save The Cat’ is a fucking joke and any writer that’s talked about it has nothing good to say. If you can find a single good screenwriter that praises it I’ll buy you a house. (*)

Okay so I’m interested…

Great! Well, the great thing about this book is that it’s a pretty cheap ebook. It’s only £2.99 on Amazon. You can get it (here)

There’s more too! Since people people genuinely have issues with the All Caps stuff buying it means you get both an All Caps version and a regular text version. You don’t have to take all my praise at my word either, you can read a section from the book (here). In this excerpt he talks about Three Act Structure.
You can also check out a bunch of articles he’s written online (here). Enjoy!

(*) - not legally binding

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

Directed By:  Alejandro González Iñárritu

Written By: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Armando Bo, Raymond Carver

Starring: Michael Keaton, Emma Stone, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Zach Galifianakis, Andrea Riseborough, Amy Ryan

Preface

I set up this blog a while ago but haven’t really written a lot for it. A big part of the reason is that a lot of the time there wasn’t really anything I had to say about a particular film that other people weren’t saying better in their reviews. So I only wrote something if I really felt like I needed to say something or get something off my chest.

When I first saw Birdman in January I *really* wanted to write something about it but I didn’t. When it started to do well in awards shows I wanted to write about it but didn’t. When it won a bunch of Oscars I wanted to write about but didn’t. The reason I kept resisting is because, well, I’m not sure if I can say how I feel about this movie without coming off kinda mean or insulting. I think the movie is dumb, has a gross message and is the expression of someone whose views I disagree with on a fundamental level. Lots of people though, my friends among them, think it’s really smart. Some of them called it a masterpiece and said it’s one the greatest films they ever saw. If I start taking this movie apart and laying out *why* people are being fooled into thinking this movie is smart (and that is what I think is happening) then what the hell am I saying about the people who love it so much? Nothing good I suppose.

So why now? The other day I posted a link to a news story about Niell Blomkamp signing onto an Alien movie and I made a joke about how it would just be a bunch of ‘fan fiction wanky bullshit’ and someone got really offended by it and argued with me. I clearly touched a nerve and I guess I was being crude and hand-wavy about it. What I said though, although crude and reductionist is based in how I really do feel. And I didn’t say it out of hate, I said it out of love. I love movies so god-damm much and I hate when I see the same horrible patterns and bad instincts repeating themselves. I’d love if the new Alien movie was great, I want every movie to be great but I don’t think trying to follow up Aliens is a good idea. So I said what I said the way I said it and someone got offended.

I had been making the same kind of glib jokes about hating Birdman since I saw it and I guess it was the same as what I did with the Alien story. Maybe I also touched a nerve and offended people. So clearly the best thing to do would be to actually lay out what my problems with the movie are in the best way I can. And not only that but I hope that I can do it in a way that is, well, not stuck up or arrogant. And what better movie to talk about that than with this one!

Phew! That was a long preface! And now on to the actual review? Umm..well…

First I’m going to talk about the directer a little bit

Who made the movie?

Birdman has four credited writers so if you’re going to talk about the movie as someone’s expression (which I will) you need to get into who the actual author is. And normally a team of four people (including the director) would make that tricky. How can you claim that Alejandro is responsible for this stuff when he had three co-writers? Luckily I don’t have to since he’s done that himself:

"When somebody is behind it with a vision, no matter how many collaborators he has—and there are always many—200 people in the crew and three or four writers, it doesn’t matter, it’s the vision of whoever makes the last decision…You can be hearing ideas, you can be influenced and be flexible, but in the end the last thing, the print of the film is by one person, only one. That’s the truth.”

But even if we want to take this on face value it can be a bit tricky. He had a very public disagreement with the writer of his first three movies over who should be credited. Guillermo Arriaga is the only credited screenwriter on Alejandro’s first three movies (although Alejandro has an idea credit for Babal. I don’t know exactly what happened between them but the facts that have been made public are these:

• Arriaga is against the auteur theory and believes that directors get too much credit for a film and the writer doesn’t get enough.
• Alejandro felt Arriaga was trying to take too much credit for their work together and took out an ad saying that he had an “unjustified obsession with claiming the sole authorship of a film," and "you were not - and you have never allowed yourself to feel part of this team”
• Alejandro had Arriaga banned from the set of Babel and had him stopped from being at the screening at Cannes.

So what happened? I don’t know. Maybe one of them was being unreasonable, maybe both were. Since I’m talking about Alejandro in this article I want to be fair and to try to give him the benefit of the doubt so let’s suppose that he brought a lot to those movies and Arriaga was being unfair. Then Alejandro’s quote about how the movie is by one person might just be defensiveness more than anything else. Maybe it sounds worse than it actually is. And maybe he kinda has a point too. 

One of the reasons I bring this up is that it happens in the film. After bring Mike into the play and they work on the scene a bit Mike goes to the press and tries to take credit away from Riggan (The movie is fairly autobiographical). But the important thing is that he’s the author of the film so I’m going to talk about it as his expression.

Superhero movies and ‘Cultural Genocide’

One last thing before getting into the actual movie itself and this is important. Alejandro has been very open about how he doesn’t like superhero movies. He calls them ‘cultural genocide’ and even puts that phrase into the movie. He’s talked in interviews about how he feels movies these days have too much action and not enough ‘ideas’. That they’re not like the movies he grew up watching and that kids these days never think about the movies they watched. He specifically said that these movies don’t have “ideas or humanity”. He’s an ARTIST who makes REAL ART of course! Not like those other assholes (he’s even said that he doesn’t watch movies - only films). 

It’s a horrible attitude that seems to have been around forever (even Hitchcock was looked down on for making popular trash in his day) and doesn’t show any sign of going away. Sometimes it’s hating of superhero movies, sometimes it’s about how many sequels and remakes we have now, sometimes it’s how they haven’t made any good films since the 70s. It always comes down to the same thing: that movies have tiers; there is art and there is trash and they should be separated. I could go on for ages about how much I hate this attitude but honestly James Gunn recently put it best. (link)

I also find this ironic since not only is Birdman lacking in smart ideas and humanity, it’s gross in the same way as the worst superhero movie of 2014. But I’ll get to that in a bit.

The shooting style

Finally! Talking about the actual movie (and only 1,300 words in! yay!)

I want to get this out of the way first. For good reason too. I think it’s nothing more than a gimmick. I know a lot of people love the style and how it was made but it just doesn’t work. There’s no reason for it. I’ve heard a few defences of it over time so it’s best to just talk about it by addressing them.

It took a lot of work

Yeah, I don’t care. Sorry, but giving yourself a bunch of extra work doesn’t make something better if it’s not in service of anything. You could shoot a whole movie with your arms tied behind your backs and turn the camera on with your nose every day if you like but it wont make your movie better

It replicates the no-sleep fever dream that Riggan is going through

When I first watched it I thought this might be what they were going for but the movie doesn’t stick to it being subjective. I even thought that maybe when the camera followed other people it would be showing what Riggan *imagines* they are doing/saying but there’s ultimately nothing to indicate that. Plus the movie very purposefully steps away from Riggan’s experience when it shows that he actually took a cab instead of flying and when it shows that his telekinesis is really just them thrashing his room. It keeps the one-shot style but jumps back and forth between being outside and inside Riggan’s head so that doesn’t work as a reason for having it.

It makes it like a play

I like this defence the most and I do like the idea of having long scenes of two actors just interacting with each other (and the actors are great here) but I feel it still takes away from the movie more than it adds to it. For one, it adds a bunch of unnecessary walking around plus the main problem is it takes the decision making out the shot construction. When you have one style over the entire movie then it kinda stops becoming an actual decision. It just becomes how things are. So there’s no motivation for the shots any more. If they mixed it up more and had sections that were one long take and sections that weren’t it would have worked better and I’m sure people would have still been impressed.

“I just really like long one-take shots”

Ha ha, I know man, me too. I really do, but they need to be motivated. They need to actually serve the story.

Ideas and Humanity

So what are these ideas that he put into the film? In his words:

"I think intelligence basically can be in a way defined by the possibility of having two opposite ideas living together and at the same time functioning. That’s why I think a smart script has two things living in the same place and they’re absolutely contradictory." and talking about the main character "He thinks that he is a great fucking artist half the time and half the time he thinks that he is a fucking jellyfish”

And that’s basically everything that Birdman is over and over again, two different ideas in the same space. But it gets into weird paces when you start looking at what those ideas actually are because Alejandro can’t help but put his own thoughts and beliefs in there. He’s stated that everyone is partially right, everyone makes a point. But then nobody in the movie advocates for something Alejando doesn’t himself strongly believe. Nobody in the movie advocates for superhero movies except to say that they’re popular and idiots like them. Every character just becomes a different part of Alejando’s belief that certain pieces of art and in turn the artists belong on a higher level than others. It all goes back to the idea of tiers. Some art is better than others, being ‘real’ is what art is really about. Everything in the movie just becomes an extension of his own beliefs. What kind of smart ‘idea’ is it to just shit on superhero movies for not being ‘real’ and where’s the humanity in placing yourself above everyone else and acting like a huge section of people are beneath you? If you really cared about 'ideas and humanity' wouldn't the smartest and most humane thing to do be trying to understand why these movies are so popular and why they resonate with people so much?

Riggan’s character arc

So what’s Riggan’s intelligence? What are his contradictory ideas? Ego and self doubt. That’s it. He thinks he’s great and that he deserves love and adoration but he also has self doubt and questions himself. Over the course of the movie people argue with him but just ignores them and the times he does listen to them it’s only in service of getting more adoration. And how does he reconcile his two ideas? He decides to completely ignore the self doubt and accept that he *is* better than everyone else and literally starts to fly over all the plebs that are below him. And everyone loves him for it. And he is now much happier and gets everything he wanted. Not by accepting his flaws but by accepting that he’s better than everyone else. Oh gee, great. 

And what movie had the same problem with the main character? The Amazing Spiderman 2. That’s  right, what is one of the worst superhero movies I’ve ever seen has the same type of gross characterisation as the movie that thinks its so much better than superheroes. In ASM2 we have a main character who is presented as being this awesome indulgent wish fulfilment avatar where all of his obstacles come from the fact that other people wont just fuck off and let him be awesome. And he keeps being proven right and everyone else keeps being proven wrong. Even when his girlfriend dies and his best friend turns into a monster it’s all their fault for not listening to him.

Riggan is the same. An indulgent wish fulfilment avatar that this time caters to artist types who want to feel like they’re special and perfect and everyone else needs to just get out of their way and let them be awesome. And I honestly feel like this is a big part of why people like the movie so much. (and I’m 100% certain it’s why the Academy loved it so much). It’s also why some people say Andrew Garfield was the better Spiderman, he’s not, he’s just the one people most want to be.

And indulgence on its own isn’t necessarily bad but it all comes down to what’s being indulged and how it’s presented and what relationship the audience has with it. Like, porn is fine as long as people know it’s porn. If you start trying to say it’s real life then you have problems. Similarly, a movie can get away with being indulgent if it wears it on it’s sleeve instead of being gross and then acting like it’s IMPORTANT.

Why people like it

This is where I get into the tricky part, where I start to fly over everyone else and explain to them why they’ve been fooled into liking this movie.

The style

I already gave this its own section but one thing to add here is that that kind of style can bring a type of ‘realness’ to a movie. What I mean is that one long take can approximate real life in a way that sometimes makes it feel ‘more real’ than something shot conventionally. Kinda similar to how a found footage movie works. Of course a long take can also sometimes make something seem more fake too but in this case I think for a lot of people it brings an air of ‘truth’ to it.

The style is also a big flashy thing that impresses a lot of people and makes the movie seem like more of a big deal than it actually is. Hell, the movie ‘Chef’ deals with a lot of the same stuff as Birdman does but it’s not as flashy so people see it as a much less ‘important’ film.

Mystical Magical stuff

There’s *just* enough that’s it’s really intriguing and seems really smart. I’m not entirely sure why this happens but the right amount of fantasy can make something feel more ‘special’. It adds an ‘intrigue’ I guess. True Detective would have been just as great if they took out the visions and the paranormal flavour but with it included it just seemed better didn’t it? People really responded to it. Same here, the movie opens with a guy floating and has telekinesis? Seems important.

The casting

Michael Keaton plays a washed up actor who once played a superhero and Edward Norton plays an intense actor who is a massive prick. Sound familiar? Well, it lines up with what a lot of people think these people are like. It makes the movie feel like it has more ‘truth’ and also more self aware than it actually is.

It’s “satire”

It’s supposed to be at least and there are parts that are funny but ultimately I don’t think it works as satire. It’s not clever enough, doesn’t say anything worthwhile or original about anything. Plus I don’t think Alejandro is able to do ‘silly’. If this was a silly lark of a movie it would work a lot better as satire but he can’t help but fill his movies with a sense of importance. Which brings us to:

It’s confident.

God god is it confident. And here’s where it gets interesting because even though I think the sense of importance gets in the way of the satire, it doesn’t get in the way of the ‘ideas’. This is a movie that is so sure of what it’s saying and saying it with such weight that you just can’t help feeling like it’s saying something of value. Just look at it! It’s IMPORTANT. It’s ABOUT STUFF, MAAAN!

Everything is in service of taking Alejandro’s toxic views and nothing ideas and either trying to hold them at arms length or leaning into them and making them seem like wisdom.

Of course I can’t really talk about the idea of using ‘tricks’ to fool someone into liking a movie without getting into the whole idea of movies being nothing but manipulations and ‘tricks’. It’s a huge conversation (and this piece is long enough) but you have to look at what ‘tricks’ are being used and what it’s in service of saying. In this case it’s saying nothing good.

Wrap up

Alejandro has been very open about how this movie was inspired by his own crises at turning 50 and struggling with his own self doubt. He’s also able to acknowledge how self important that was, he claims that’s why he made it a satire, to create distance. He also said he didn’t want to make it into a tragedy so he purposefully went in another direction with it. But the satire didn’t work and the ‘other direction’ just ended up being to ignore the self doubt and embrace his own greatness.

And so we’re left with this movie. A director who feels he is important and looks down on other movies and the people that make them made a movie all about how great it is to be better than everyone else as long as you just ignore that pesky self doubt that gets in the way. If he had just stood up and said all that stuff people would have probably hated him, but instead he put it into a movie and instead of dealing with he just indulges and gets praised for it. People are liking a movie made by a guy that looks down on them about how they deserve to be looked down on.

And here I am making fun of shit on Facebook and worrying that I might be putting down people in ways that I don't want to. Instead I could be making a movie where my stand-in is better than everyone else and I’ll get called a genius. Go figure.