|
|
During the first year of my MFA, when we’d all returned from our month of winter break, the professor who was my favorite at the time asked us if we’d gotten any writing done.
I said, “Yeah, if blogging counts.” It was facetious. Of course blogging counts. Teehee! A joke! I had done lots of blogging! Lots of Twittering and lots of Tumblring and lots of blogging and lots of reading others personal narratives via blog.
He returned, dead seriously, “No. No, it doesn’t.”
And at the time I couldn’t even really respond because that idea flabbergasted me SO MUCH. The idea that, somehow, because the writing was going on the internet by my own hand instead of into a folder on my hard drive to be theoretically published by some authority figure was absolutely FLABBERGASTING. FLABBERGASTING. Do you understand how significant the feeling of flabbergast is? IT IS UNBELIEVABLE.
And I sort of gaped and said nothing. But I got home and RANTED to my poor girlfriend and yelled at him through the miles that divided us. This guy had spent his formative years as a ROCK CRITIC!! And then became a genre writer! IF anybody should understand why playing writing police is bullshit, it should have been him. But instead he was an ass. FUCK YOU, DUDE, FUCK YOU A LOT.
One of my other professors later went on a rant about how “THEY” — this large and unidentified entity that included what seemed liked all media producers — didn’t want you to read or write. They wanted you to “watch movies and buy things and BLOG about it”.
I have literally never heard the word “blog” spit with more venom ever. No one will EVER yell “blog” with that much hate in their throat. I think I got some on me, actually. And it super a lot pissed me off. Like A LOT A LOT. Because you know what? Fuck you. Writing is writing. Writers have different processes and different kinds of writing has different processes but they are all WRITING and fuck you if you’re going to belittle one in order to raise up another.
ALSO, it’s not like book publishing and writing are fucking noble-ass pursuits! PEOPLE WANT YOU TO READ AND TELL PEOPLE ABOUT IT TOO SO THAT THEY CAN SELL MORE BOOKS. This is not a complicated idea. People make things and then sell them because they want to make money. If they didn’t, they’d put everything ON THE INTERNET FOR FREE. (People should be paid for their creative products. I am not arguing otherwise at all.)
I blog because I love writing. I love it. I like talking about myself and I like talking about dumb shit and serious shit. I LOVE THE INTERNET. I love the sense of community that comes from blogging. And fuck those guys and anyone else that doesn’t get it.
Anyway, I’m not mad. (LOL I AM REALLY NOT OKAY) But I saw someone having a crisis about whether they should keep blogging the other day because it wasn’t “real writing” and I got super bummed out because there are so many of us who have had to absorb that bullshit from other people and just laugh it off and pretend to be unmoved by our belittling.
Blogging matters, man. It’s instant, constant, and current. It’s often genuine and funny and honest. It fosters community and interaction and idiocy and genius and creativity. It keeps a whole lot of people WRITING. If I didn’t blog, I wouldn’t write nearly as much as I do now, I would’ve missed out on fiction ideas that came from the process of blogging. Blogging is writing and it matters and it’s awesome. THE END.
This isn’t a very thoughtul blog but I believe in it. BLOGGING MATTERS. And stuff. Also, if you have the desire to cry today, DO I HAVE A RECIPE FOR YOU.
Man, just put these sad ladies and their pianos on loop and you will cry and cry. You will be SO SAD. Can’t spell piano without PAIN.
So I’m trying not to feel weird and bummed about my internship and my attempts at avoidance are not going particularly well (and I will explain regardless of the outcome once I actually know what the outcome is) so I’m going to BLOG. The internet is millennial therapy, NO JOKE.
So my girlfriend has been trying to get me to watch the original Star Wars trilogy for… the entire four years I have known her? Because she was legitimately horrified that I hadn’t seen it. (I saw the third prequel in theaters, that counts for… absolutely nothing.) But I get sooooooooooooo impatient with sci-fi and fantasy that I can’t sit through anything. ANYTHING. Name a fantasy or sci-fi movie or series and there is an almost-certainty that I will not have seen it. Lord of the Rings? No. The Matrix? No. OG Star Trek? No. Battlestar Galactica? No. Jesus Chronicles of Narnia? No. The Neverending Story? No. Labyrinth? No. If I list anymore you’ll assume I grew up in a cave and I did not, I swear.
But ANYWAY, I finally gave in and started watching the Star Wars thing with her a couple of weeks ago and it was pretty okay! I think. I don’t know because I could only watch like 40 minutes at a time before I would have to take a break for three or four days. Or a week. Or two. But we’re done now! And whatever, I like the one with all the muppets! What’s wrong with you people. Ewoks, cute as fuck. Ewoks dancing. So many joyful, tiny dog-bears.
But there is something we have to talk about now. And no, that thing is not 1. Han Solo the babeatron or 2. Princess Leia the BOSS or 3. fuuuuuuuck Yoda sucks. It is this:
WHAT WHAT WHAT. HOW CAN ANYONE DEAL WITH THIS. I CAN’T DEAL WITH IT. I CAN’T. Why is everyone just walking around pretending that Yoda doesn’t sound EXACTLY LIKE MISS PIGGY?! I know Frank Oz did both, I KNEW THAT, but COME ON. I can’t, I just can’t, internet. I JUST CANNOT.
It’s like if Miss Piggy and Kermit had a real old baby. I tried to morph that on the internet, but it did not go well.
Muppets are clearly not meant for morph.
ANYWAY WHATEVER. Life-changer:
I just want to hug him and squeeze him and love him for life, you guys. I just want a Wicket of my own that lives with me and rubs my feet and lets me feed him starfruit while we watch British sitcoms. This is my ideal life, just give it to me.
This life does not include sex with a small, cute bear-dog Ewok creature. Just starfruit, okay.
NOT SEX WITH STARFRUIT EITHER OKAY. Stop it.
Let’s talk about how I am really excited about this movie! And not just because I love everyone in it!
It’s pretty uncharacteristic of me — I like movies where things (literally) blow up and where there are fart jokes and dick jokes and violence and blood and sex and stuff. I love comedies, but not generally ones that are about chicks or relationships. Not that there are a lot of comedies about chicks! WHICH IS WHY I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT THIS MOVIE!
If a man tells someone that he likes comedy movies, they think about stuff like The Hangover (which I love) or Clerks (which I love) or maybe animated movies like Shrek or Toy Story or Groundhog Day or Hot Fuzz or Ghostbusters or The 40 Year Old Virgin or American Pie or Tropic Thunder or Animal House a ton of other movies that I DO in fact love.
If a woman tells someone that she like comedies, they think about stuff like Love, Actually or The Bounty Hunter or Moonstruck or Sleepless in Seattle or You’ve Got Mail or Splash or 27 Dresses or a million others JUST LIKE THOSE.
The commonality between these two groups is that most of those movies have predominantly male leads. The ones that have a female lead are usually the “romantic comedies.” As if women are unable to laugh except when the jokes come between bouts of relationship drama. Female-starring comedies, straight-up comedies that are NOT primarily about a relationship, just don’t exist. Off of the top of my head, I can honestly not think of a single one. NOT ONE.
SO I DON’T LIKE ROMANTIC COMEDIES. Generally. I don’t like them because the women are USUALLY: weak, boring, self-involved, only concerned about the men in their lives, insecure, unstable, vengeful, bitter, catty, stereotypical, anti-women, anti-man, anti-human, baby-crazy, often in competition with one another, and rarely fleshed out as anything other than half of the relationship dynamic.
I’m not saying that romantic comedies don’t exist where this isn’t the case — though it isn’t perfect, I actually think the women of Love, Actually are pretty well done — it’s just incredibly unusual.
This is where You Again comes in. Based on the trailer: There are women! LOTS OF THEM. And they’re not competing for a man! Or worried primarily about the romantic pleasure of a man! They are successful! And driven! And smart!
The trailer alone passes the Bechdel Test!
Granted, it’s still women: in competition, being catty, man-oriented (even if it’s family), petty, and stereotypical, but it looks like they learn a decent lesson about being human, forgiveness, all that great stuff.
So I remain cautiously optimistic and hope that maybe, just maybe, studios will learn that female-driven movies don’t all have to be Eat, Pray, Love or Bride Wars because there is an eager audience just waiting for them to do it right.
So! Today I went and saw Inception again. I KNOW, I KNOW, WHATEVER, I DO WHAT I WANT.
Plus it was free because I had an old-ass coupon.
So anyway, the parts that I liked, but had to bear through gritted, angry teeth the first time were SO MUCH MORE enjoyable this time around, since I already knew I hated the ending and didn’t have to sit, waiting, knowing what was going to happen, but not being able to be CERTAIN, and the parts I didn’t like were… some were more tolerable (the snowscapades were still so incredibly idiotic, but they became almost transcendentally watchable in their idiocy) and others were still completely and utterly hateable in every way (that last shot, Mal, NO ONE MOVING THEIR FACE AT ALL).
The thing that was MOST frustrating was that, on the first viewing I was like, “Hey, there are some legit plot holes up in this motherfucker.” and on second watch it was like, “WAS ANYONE EVEN WATCHING THIS MOVIE AS IT WAS BEING MADE? WAS THERE EVEN A SCRIPT?!”
It was as though every time someone said, “Hey, Christopher Nolan, there’s this GLARING error in your story and it’s kind of ruining the pretty cool mythology that you are trying to build up in herrre,” Christopher Nolan was like, “I’M CHRISTOPHER NOLAN, SUCK MY DIIIIIIIIICK. MAKE THE SLO-MO GO SLOOOOOOWER. NO ONE WILL NOTICE. I AM BUSY FUCKING BATMAN. I AM THE GOD DAMN BATMAN. SLOOOOOOOOOOWER!” or some approximation of that.
And hey, man, I liked Transformers! And, awkward racism aside, I found the second one to be pretty watchable! It’s not like I am over here expecting some Citizen Kane or Vertigo master work up in my AMC. I just want movies to like, I don’t know, make sense beyond their first viewing.
I’m not even going to talk about the actual plot holes (Google that shit, son!) because I will just feel a lot of awkward, now passion-less rage again, instead I am going to, SHOCKER, talk about some shit I liked.
Like I said last time, I really dug the zero g ballet. I think a lot of the effects in the movie are sort of hokey and plastic looking, but the shift in gravity after everyone except Arthur has descended to the next level is incredibly cool. It looks like a practical effect as the world is tilting (the Fatboy Slim video wall crawling portion) and whether or not it is a practical effect, the fact that it looks like one delights me. The extended sequence beyond that is a little too long and a little too graceful, but I still think it’s good-looking enough to warrant some interest/credit.
The train blowing through the middle of Downtown L.A. scared the holy shit out of me both times I watched the movie. The sound mixing is perfect for it and even when I knew it was coming, it was startling.
Arthur and Eames’s banter and antagonism toward one another is fabulous. “You mustn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling” is the kind of smarmy charm that the movie would’ve been infinitely weaker without. Plus, more importantly, they both seem to really love their jobs. Cobb hates his skills because they’re all he has left, Ariadne is terrified of it, Saito and Yusuf play their roles willingly, but without a lot of joy. Arthur and Eames know what they’re good at and they’re more than willing to do it.
The initial kick (Cobb into the bathtub) is a great, lively use of ramping. Granted, it’s TOO SLOW and too long, but it changes speed in a way that looks really cool and helps the audience understand the difference in time between dream levels. It doesn’t serve that last purpose particularly well (it doesn’t when he overuses it through the rest of the movie either) but god damn if it don’t look cool for twenty seconds.
I kind of loved the crap out of Fischer. Cillian Murphy is the WEIRDEST LOOKING FAMOUS PERSON EVER, but he’s pretty damn good at under and over-selling shit in the right places. I don’t know, maybe I am just tricked by his weird face.
A visual motif with which I am down:
I am sure there were other instances of those Tetris-ish pieces showing up (Ariadne’s mazes, the paradox construction, Mal and Cobb building in limbo, etc.) but I really noticed the top and bottom ones here as directly referencing each other. Since I occasionally like to overthink things (I know that’s shocking, I KNOW.) I like to think that they’re subtle visual cues nodding to the completion of whatever “puzzle” Nolan was trying to draw. The first image is from Arthur and Cobb’s helicopter ride with Saito, the last is from Fischer’s safe room at the end. In the end, the puzzle is complete.
Draw what you want from that! Regardless of it’s intentions (or unintentions), I like the look. Especially in that last scene.
ANYWAY. What the hell is up with no one moving their face? Marion Cotillard looks like she’s made of wax and Joseph Gordon-Levitt talks like he’s got Bells Palsy. WHAT IS EVEN GOING ON IN THERE? Were they trying to make up for Leonardo DiCaprio’s constant fart-smelling face? DOES INCEPTION WORK LIKE BOTOX?
The world may never know.
I hated Inception. I think Michelle Collins has a brief hate-view here that I agree with, but there’s not enough rage. I also liked this one a lot and which I found by googling “I hated Inception,” which I think is going to become part of my daily internet routine.
Obviously I am neither the first nor last to say it, but that last shot of the movie is infuriating. That god damn spinning top. That spinning top is not just a signal for Dom Cobb’s stasis in the dream world, but it’s a symbol of an entire sect of movie-making and movie-going that stupidly believes that a twist ending or an unhappy ending makes a smart movie. NEWSFLASH: it doesn’t.
When Cobb tells Ariadne about the continuously spinning top in the beginning (that’s what, thirty minutes in?) I went, “Oh, it’s going to end on the still spinning top, GOD DAMN IT, M. NIGHT CHRISTOPHER NOLAN.” and I got irritated enough to consider walking out. 1. Because I KNEW he was going to pull some bullshit (I DO NOT TRUST CHRISTOPHER NOLAN AT ALL). 2. Because that’s some serious bullshit. 3. BECAUSE YOU SHOULDN’T BE ABLE TO DO THAT. EVER. But I thought, “No, man, don’t be that guy! Don’t walk out! This might still be cool!”
IT FUCKING WASN’T and I spent the rest of the time: hoping it wouldn’t end that way, hating Marion Cotillard (if there’s one thing Christopher Nolan really sucks at, it’s writing female characters. Dude has some Issues.), trying to remember things I actually liked so I could talk about those parts with people who actually liked it, getting irritated at how hard it was trying to be smart and edgy, staring at Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy and Ellen Page, wishing Batman would swoop in and kill everyone, resenting Christopher Nolan for having a career (even though I fucking LOVE The Prestige), wishing M. Night Shyamalan had never made The Sixth Sense, hoping for more Michael Caine, thinking about walking out, thinking about Harry Potter, thinking about how irritating hypnic jerks are, wanting to see Ellen Page topless, wishing I was watching Mysterious Skin or reruns of Third Rock From the Sun, wondering what I would use as my totem, thinking about a totem dildo, and wondering if catering served nothing but beans because it always looks like Leonardo DiCaprio is smelling a fart.
The ending is more than just frustrating though, it’s shitty. I’m not just talking about the people who think sad or twisted endings make movies instantly smart or good. Those people are the cause, I’m just talking about the symptom, about the FIVE MINUTES out of TWO AND A HALF HOURS at the end of the movie that negated every emotional or narrative connection the viewer has made with the story.
The spinning top marks irrefutably that at least some portion of the preceding events have been a dream (And it does, you would be hard pressed to convince me otherwise. He wakes up on the plane, clearly unaware of how he got there and then the top keeps spinning. Even if it wobbles, the viewer never gets the drop. There’s no getting around it.) Nolan is telling the audience that they must now disregard EVERYTHING THEY JUST WATCHED. They can speculate about which parts were real and which were not, where the lines drew and how it was shaped and that speculation can be fun and engaging and take a movie to an additional level, but that’s not how Inception feels.
Inception feels like Christopher Nolan jerked me off (and badly at that) for TWO AND A HALF HOURS then took a dump on my chest with the last shot and said, “Fuck you, thanks for the money, eat that shit.”
TWO AND A HALF HOURS.
I even stayed through the credits (I always do, but still.) LITERALLY CROSSING MY FINGERS that there would be a tag where the top fell. Fuck, god damn, I would’ve ejaculated mountain streams on the AMC carpet! I would have eaten Christopher Nolan’s shit.
But no. I found only more rage.
I won’t go into the rest of the movie’s failures — and oh are there many, characterization, effects, writing, dialogue, that god damn snowscapades bullshit where everyone is Alpine skiing from DANGER — because the ending is so god awful that I am willing to let everything else go.
In summary: there was some cool imagery — I was very, very into the concept and the way the dreamscape could be manipulated, even though it looked terrible 60% of the time, a couple of badass scenes — I thought the zero G sequence with Joseph Gordon-Levitt was the best part of the entire movie, and a totally bullshit ending.
Further: neither a “twist” nor an unhappy ending make a movie good.
Now I’m going to go have a lie down and think about the sequel I would write where Michael Caine orchestrated the dream world in order to give his son-in-law some peace and hope that in the inevitable nap-dream that will follow, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Tom Hardy will like to drink and smoke and tell dirty jokes.
|
|
