The New News

I've read a lot recently about the downfall of print media. Newspapers, magazines, and journals are all slowly dying out, soon to be replaced by digital counterparts. This development surprises me, at least in regards to newspapers, because I cannot abide the web layout of all the news sites I've come across.

Take a look at The New York Times' site for instance: http://www.nytimes.com/

It's clustered, it's confusing--I'm not even sure what the headline is. Contrast that with an actual copy of The New York Times newspaper, which is clear, economical, and structured perfectly so as to direct the reader's attention to the biggest stories. Currently, the layout of the newspaper so obviously outranks the layout of the newspaper website that I wonder if it's not that newspapers are being abandoned for news sites, but rather that the news is being abandoned in general.

At any rate, newspapers have not made an easy transition into the digital era. A large part of this has to do with revenue, I think. When the Internet rose up seemingly out of nowhere last decade, there emerged an almost miraculous lack of the capitalism that usually marks any sort of competing market. Or rather, perhaps, the Internet represents an ultimate, bizarro form of capitalism, in which there are so many competitors and the cost of production is so little, that in order to stay in business, a person cannot charge for access to their goods. In other words, the expectation that has been laid out for us from the Internet is that all digital content is free. Physical things still merit charges, but the intangible does not. This is why people will pay for a newspaper subscription, but become irritated or even outraged when a newspaper website wants them to pay for online access. (On a sidenote, I think this is one of the reasons music and movie piracy is so prevalent. Sure, people will pay for a CD, that's actually a thing. But an mp3? C'mon, that's just data. Data is free.)

This problem is one that faces not just newspapers, but all websites. The majority of people simply won't pay for access to a website. And while traditionally, newspapers have been able to depend on both advertisements within their papers and readers as sources of revenue, newspapers now have to adjust to a world in which virtually all of their revenue must come from advertisements. (Granted, this isn't too big a deal. 70-80% of newspaper revenue comes from ads, not subscriptions.)

But this is diverging from the original point I wanted to make and heading into territory where I'm essentially just conjecturing wildly about a field I know little to nothing about. So to veer back to where I began, newspaper websites' layouts are vastly more confusing and unnavigable than their printed equivalents'.

I thought about why printed newspapers so greatly exceeded online news for awhile and I eventually concluded that the reason lies in the infiniteness of the internet. The internet knows no spatial boundaries. Unlike a book or a magazine, a website is seemingly endless. One page leads to another, which leads to another, and then to another, in an endless spiral of web-searching. A newspaper, on the other hand, is self-contained. It has a beginning, it has an end, and a middle contained between the two, all of which I can hold in one hand. If I want to read the news from a newspaper, I need simply start on the top page at the upper-left hand corner and continue down, from page to page, and eventually, I will have imbibed that day's news.

With a news website, such an undertaking would be impossible. The main page contains an endless number of links to other pages, which in turn threaten to overwhelm the user with endless more links, each of which leads to more links, etc etc. The limitlessness of the internet is certainly one of its greatest assets, but in the case of news sites, the lack of bounds creates the feeling that one has never quite finished reading the news. It is currently a deeply unsatisfying experience to read the news online.

I imagine that in the future though, there will be a shift within the layout of news sites back toward the design of newspapers. The future news site will integrate the digital with the print not by boasting the limitlessness of the information on the website, as the news sites currently do, but rather by hiding it. The news site will come to resemble its progenitor, the newspaper. It will be self-contained and be able to be read from top to bottom, cover to cover. The ability to leap from one article to any dozen related articles will still be available, but it will be more concealed, instead of jumping out at the user. The future news site, in essence, will create the virtual experience of reading a newspaper.

Remaking Harry Potter

I wrote this entry out of boredom during my last week of work. I never got around to finishing it, and now that I'm back at school, I probably won't ever finish it. Instead, I'm just going to post what I've already written, so this post will end abruptly.

At some point in the future, most likely not even within our lifetimes, the Harry Potter movies will be remade. I am fairly certain of this, and I'd here like to muse about the shape these remakes could take, what challenges they might face, and where they could go right where the original films went wrong.

I think one of the best things the new adaptations would have going for them is that the new movies would be working with the end in mind. Whereas the first films were stuck not knowing which characters would end up dating, who would turn to the dark side, et cetera, et cetera, a new series would have everything laid out for it from the get-go. The filmmakers could map out the entire book series, separating weed from chaff in terms of what most needs emotional emphasis in the overall arc of the series.

And speaking of filmmakers, I think that that would be another huge advantage the new films would have over the old ones. I think it's likely the new filmmakers would have a much deeper respect and love for the series than the current ones do/did. At this point in time, Harry Potter isn't really taken very seriously by too many adults. Many of the Harry Potter cast members have never actually read any of the books, Alan Rickman and Michael Gambon included. Similarly, none of the Potter directors came to the project of their own accord, but were offered the series by Warner Bros. Literary critics are by and large dismissive of Potter's literary significance, about which I wouldn't contest them. Harry Potter isn't great literature. But that doesn't mean it isn't important. It's arguably the most important book of the past century, at least in terms of its overall cultural impact. That impact has yet to really fully permeate into the adult world though. That's not to say there aren't plenty of adults who don't read and like Harry Potter. What I'm saying is that only just now is there a generation coming into adulthood who actually grew up reading Harry Potter. (On a side note, I'm very interested to see how Harry Potter's influence affects my generation's fantasy writers.) Once all of the original film series has finished and the Potter hype has more or less died down, I think Potter's literary significance will more or less cease being debated and the series will gradually grow in respectability, at least as a children's classic. And in this more Potter-accepting society (although Harry will be far, far less hyped by this time), I think there will emerge a filmmaker who loves and understands the series in a way that only one who grew up reading the series could. And this filmmaker will see the original Potter movies and say to himself (or herself), "I can and will make better Harry Potter movies."

From that point, the stars will have to align a bit for the project to actually move into fruition. Enough time will have had to have passed since the original film series for a new one to justify existing. The studio--I imagine Warner Bros. will forever hold onto the Harry Potter rights--will have to be convinced that a costly remake of the Harry Potter series would be a lucrative endeavor. The director will most likely have to have earned enough clout from his previous works to push the studio toward allowing him to make the movies. And there might also perhaps be legal issues with Rowling's estate about a new film series. But I'm sure at some point in the future, of all these things will come to pass, and then a new Harry Potter film series will move into production. This brings me to casting.

The Harry Potter movies have become such a staple in most of our lives that I think we've forgotten what an amazing anomaly they are. An enormous cast of actors, many of whom were all children at the project's inception, has stuck with the same film series for eight entire movies. Nothing else has ever happened like that. (Even if the Narnia series successfully plows its way through a Last Battle movie, the series switches off to a new, younger pair of children every two books or so, a wonderfully fortuitous plot direction for Hollywood.) Successfully adapting Harry Potter requires an enormous time commitment from so many actors, most of them children that it's almost miraculous it's even happened once. Replicating that again in the future will be equally tricky. There are, however, definite places for improvement from the original series.

To begin with, Snape. Alan Rickman's Snape is not a good adaptation of the character. Yeah, yeah, I know. "WHAATTT?!!" you're thinking angrily, readying your metaphorical pitchfork. Look, I love Alan Rickman. Probably even more than you do. And yes, his portrayal of Snape is deliciously sardonic; his mere presence onscreen makes me crack a grin. And that's exactly the problem. Snape is not supposed to be lovable. He is an asshole. He is, in fact, very nearly evil. Let's not forget (spoilers spoilers) that the only reason Snape stopped casually murdering muggles with Voldemort was because of his childhood crush on Lily. (End spoilers.) Let's also not forget that passage from Goblet of Fire in which Malfoy jinxes Hermione's buckteeth so that they grow hugely out of proportion and Snape, surveying the crying little girl before him, says "I see no difference." Those, ladies and gentleman, are the words of a bona fide asshole! Sure, there's a black comedy to his response, but that doesn't change the fact that he cruelly mocked the physical appearance of a fourteen-year-old girl. (In fact, one must wonder if Hermione's purposeful buckteeth shrinking a few minutes later wasn't related to Snape's assholiness to her.) Alan Rickman's Snape never quite captures how truly despicable the character should be. He essentially is playing a comic role, and his portrayal never suggests the tortured emotion and nastiness that should be lurking inside. When the eighth Harry Potter movie is released next summer, I'm not sure if the "Snape's Story" passage will be able to carry nearly as much weight as it did in the book.

But a new series could right this wrong. New Potter movies could craft a different Snape, one from a darker, nastier cut than Rickman. And they could right another casting wrong as well: Hermione. Hold on! Hold on! Put down that pitchfork! Remain calm and seated. Let me stress here, as I did before with Alan Rickman, that I have no problem with Emma Watson. I think she's a talented actress who will likely go on to do great things. But she just isn't Hermione. She's too pretty. It's a weird complaint, sure, but I think it's also a valid one. Book Hermione had bushy, rarely combed hair, aforementioned buckteeth, and rarely wore makeup. This is Emma Watson. She's just not Hermione. Before I continue though, I should point out something here I probably should've mentioned before I start hating on Rickman-Snape. While Rickman is not a good Snape and Watson is not a good Hermione and other actors I've yet to mention are not good characters I've yet to mention, I do think the movies operate on their own merit to an extent. Emma Watson-Hermione works as a character, as does Alan Rickman-Snape. They are entertaining to watch and believable. In short, they work. They're just not ideal representations of their characters, and in a new films series, different actors might better play those roles.

Alright so that said, who else do I have a gripe with? Rupert Grint has never quite been the perfect Ron. I can't entirely pinpoint why, although it think it might just be that Grint isn't as endearing as Ron should be. Retrospectively, I think Michael Gambon is a better Dumbledore than Richard Harris was. I guess if I wanted to get really picky, I should start complaining about how the guy who played Neville should've remained fat for his entire young adult life, but that just seems cruel.

But how about some praise? How about some parts that were cast so well that casting them in the new movies is going to be a most daunting task? Who can improve, after all, on Maggie Smith's McGonagall? Or Imelda Staunton's Umbridge? Not to mention the monumental task of finding a new Harry. It's almost eerie how perfectly Daniel Radcliffe represents the globe's collective imagining of what Harry Potter should look like. Plus, he can act (at least now he can). Finding a Harry Potter was hard ten years ago, and it will be equally if not more difficult to cast him again in the future.

Locations will also be problematic. I think Hogwarts has all been blazoned into our mind as this specific image:

Trying to craft a new castle to take that one's iconic place will be a formidable challenge.

A Plea Regarding Twilight Hating

So most of you will remember that about two years ago I penned a relatively lengthy parody of Stephanie Meyers' Twilight. The time during which I wrote this spoof was an interesting one for the Twilight series. Breaking Dawn had just been released, and the first trailers for the Twilight movie were trickling into theaters and the internet. More interesting, however, was that I think this time represented a sort of intermediary period for the Twilight books. A transition from one era to another (if you can call the space of a few months an "era"). I remember a time, before my Twilight spoof, I think it was in 2007, that the Twilight books were not just popular amongst a devoted few but were universally adored by all girls. I cannot think of a single girl I know who didn't read the Twilight books and who wasn't a fan of them. I think interestingly it's not that girls were unaware of Twilight's shortcomings, but rather that they were aware of them and chose to ignore them. I remember during this time being specifically asked by at least three different girls to not read the Twilight series, because they knew that if I did, I wouldn't be able to help but point out the numerous inconsistencies and general ridiculousness contained therein. So I stayed away from Twilight until I think around when Breaking Dawn came out--which I think was the turning point for most girls from loving Twilight to indifference towards it--before I finally read the book.

Well, as you probably know, I found it very amusing and sappy and so I wrote a parody of it, which was relatively popular on Facebook. Shortly after my spoof though, the release date of the Twilight movie grew closer, and then Twilight really hit national attention. That's when it moved from being a girls-only property to being the subject of widespread derision. Once the movie came out, Twilight joined the ranks of those properties that are beloved by a small section of devotees but that are ridiculed and despised by the rest of the world (who feel very smug, cool, and rebellious in their hatred). Other such properties include, for instance, the Jonas Brothers, High School Musical, Hannah Montana, etc.

Now the thing you have to understand before I continue is that all of these properties do indeed suck. The Jonas Brothers are not mediocre musicians who are unjustly reviled, they are actually horrible musicians. But what I've grown so, so tired of is the endless, ubiquitous hatred of these properties, Twilight included. I think people imagine that they're being very counter-cultural and cool every time they proclaim their hatred for Twilight, but quite the opposite, I think they're just leeching off the "coolness" of putting down an easy target. And yeah, like I said before, Twilight does suck. I wrote a whole spoof revolving around its terribleness. But the Twilight books have been out for years, and the first movie came out in 2008. All the good jokes to be made about Twilight were made, and any other jokes about it at this point come across to me as only slightly more pathetic than the Twilight books and movies themselves. In fact, the only source that's really still generating amusing material from the Twilight series are the actual Twilight movies, which is why frankly, I have no complaints about them. They're hilarious films, and I've seen every one on its opening weekend.

And I can hear you now already saying, "Yeah, but I'm just so tired of Twilight being everywhere, it's like you can't escape it and I just hate that." Yeah, well a huge part of that is your own damn fault. If you and every single stupid media outlet--from The Soup to SNL to virtually every website on the internet--would just stop talking about how bad Twilight is, it wouldn't be so ubiquitous anymore. Because frankly, the main reason Twilight gets thrust into my life isn't from the actual series itself but from people mocking it either on Facebook or television or the internet. And yeah, Twilight sucks, but stop leeching off the hatred for it in an attempt to be cool. There are no more jokes to be had from Twilight, save from the movies themselves. At this point, I would rather watch a Twilight movie than a Twilight parody, because the former is bound to be a lot more entertaining and amusing than the latter, albeit unintentionally.

If people really hated Twilight as much as they purport to, I think that rather than dredging it up for a beating at every opportunity, they would just keep their mouths shut about it. But people aren't doing that and I think it's because they're really just hopping on the Twihate bandwagon. It's not that you can't or shouldn't ever diss it, I'm just sick of Twilight-hating as this incessant, ever-present sport. Hating Twilight is not cool and it's not counter-cultural, even though, yes, again, it does suck. I'm not saying you should like Twilight, and indeed you shouldn't because it's pretty awful. Just keep it down, mock it in moderation, and please don't think you're being cool for mocking it because everyone knows it's bad. To be cool in disliking something, amongst other things you have to actually be going against the status quo, which hating Twilight isn't. For God's sake, we still have two more years of Twilight movies down the road, so let's all just try to get through this unscathed.

On the Difficulties of Post-Series Sequels

So I was bored at work today (as usual) and spent a little while typing up what I view to be the potential problems an author faces when trying to write a sequel to their epic fantasy series. The types of series I'm talking about here are specifically those with one conflict that runs throughout the series and which is seemingly concluded in the series' final book (typically the defeat of a major villain). Such series would include the Harry Potter books, Percy Jackson and the Olympians, the Bartimaeus Trilogy, and even Avatar: The Last Airbender, as I suppose these problems are applicable to movies and tv shows too.

Anyway, this is what I wrote earlier today, without much editing (too lazy):

The difficulty with sequels to some grand fantasy saga like Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings is that the sweep of the entire series has been the journey of the main characters to destroy this evil villain and restore balance to the world. A sequel is still a story in its own right and must therefore have a conflict. Conflict necessitates a villain. The problem here is that in order for a sequel to be successful, it must have conflict. And in order for there to be conflict, there must be a villain. And no matter who that villain is, the upsurgence of a new villain essentially undermines everything that was achieved in the main series. When the thrust of your plotline has been the defeat of darkness and the restoration of balance, if some new ultimate evil villain emerges not but a few years after the defeat of the old one, then all of the actions taken by the protagonists in the original series seem futile. What was the point of all the trouble they went to if Evil Villain 2 is just going to show up a few years later? On top of this problem is the fact that a new evil villain retroactively undermines the old one. If we've spent the whole series hearing about how Voldemort or Sauron or whoever is the biggest badass around, what are we to think when some new threat turns up so soon after the defeat of the old one? "Oh, guess the first guy wasn't THE ultimate evil villain after all..."

A seeming way to rectify this problem is by writing a sequel in which, yes, there is a villain, but he's not nearly so evil as the villain fought in the main series so the evilness of the original series' ultimate villain isn't undermined. This approach, too, is problematic because a lesser villain deflates the sense of conflict in the sequel that was so critical to the main series. Epic fantasy sagas hinge on that battle of good and evil built up from book one and ending in the vanquishing of the villain in the final book. That series-spanning conflict is so necessary to the series, that a sequel, without the villain hanging over the protagonist, just won't feel like part of the same series. It will render the sequel as only an unnecessary addendum, and a lame one at that.

Another flawed resolution to the sequel problem is to dredge up the villain from the original series in an "He only seemed to be dead!" twist. Unfortunately though, like the creation of a new ultimate villain, the resurrection of the old villain still undermines everything that came before. If we've already read the final battle, with its requisite drama and self-sacrificing and ultimate defeat of the bad guy, bringing the bad guy back around for a second fight can only feel tired and self-defeating. He's already been fought and beaten before, in what was supposed to be the last battle. How lame does that battle become if it was only apparently the second-to-last Last Battle?

There is also of course the thuddingly stupid "Aw heck who needs a villain? Let's just hang out with our pals as they journey around!" approach. A novel that takes this approach quickly reveals to us that we really only enjoyed the company of the characters when they were in the midst of conflict and mystery. Although we enjoy their quibbling and joking in peace time, what we really want is drama. We want to see these characters fight, sacrifice, and struggle. When they're not in trouble, they get a little boring. Without any villain, a sequel just feels hopelessly lifeless.

Really, the only successful way to do a sequel to something like Harry Potter is to set the sequel so far in the future from the original series that it can have its own big bad guy without undermining the plight of the characters from the original series. Unfortunately, two problems arise from this solution. The first is that part of the charm of the original series was from the characters the reader came to know and enjoy the company of, and these characters won't be around in the sequel. A sequel without those original characters has the arduous task before it of creating new characters who will be constantly weighed against and judged by the old characters, and for some readers, will just never feel the same. Potentially, a character from the original series could cameo as a much older person in the new series, but I've always disliked this approach too. For me, reading about a character who always existed in my mind as a child suddenly playing the part of "the wise old man" to this new generation of protagonists always feels strangely wrong and depressing to me. The second problem that arises from setting the sequel in the future is that many series, Harry Potter being a prime example, are set in the present. Setting the sequel in the future might thus actually entail the author's having to write about the future future. As in the sequel would have to be set potentially decades after the time in which the book was being written, like 2020 or something. A fantasy novel would thus be turned into a science fiction novel. (Actually come to think of it, Harry Potter might have a neat little trick to potentially sidestep this problem, if ever J.K. Rowling wrote a sequel series: Harry Potter is technically set in the 90s. If Rowling waited long enough, she might be able to have put enough distance between the original Harry series and the new one that would allow for the creation of a new ultimate villain.)

In conclusion, when a series sets out with a limited structure in mind and centers its conflict around the defeat of one major villain, any follow-up sequel to this series risks either undermining everything that came before it or just paling in comparison.

Kick-Ass

Growing up, a large determinant as to whether or not I could see a movie, in addition to the MPAA rating and the Screenit.com review, was the rating of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops. The USCCB's ratings ranged from A-1 (equivalent to a G rating), to A-III (adults only), to L (limited adult audiences). And then there was a special rating reserved for films so morally detestable that they presumably would be cast into the pits of hell during the Final Judgment: O, morally offensive. Watching a blood-stained twelve-year-old girl brandishing a switchblade and spitting at thugs "Okay, you c*nts, let's see what you can do now," I thought to myself, "Kick-Ass just went from an L to an O."

Tossing morality to the wind, Kick-Ass bursts forth with profanity-spewing, death-dealing pre-teen girls, mobsters getting microwaved, and an eternally weird Nicholas Cage channeling Adam West's Batman via the Punisher. Mark Millar, fresh off 2008's gapingly implausible Wanted, brings some of that film's devil-may-care attitude towards logic to Kick-Ass, but with a firmer base in reality this time out. Or at least until the film's second act in which the movie's self-proclaimed realism fizzles out and is replaced by the tropes of the genre it purports to be satirizing. While keeping closer to the grittiness of its source material might have yielded a sharper film, Kick-Ass's gleeful violence and glorious amorality make for an undeniably entertaining, imaginative, and satisfying movie even when it doesn't have much a brain to it.

Alice in Wonderland

Once the shunned oddball stuck playing in his own corner of the Hollywood playground, Tim Burton has in the past few years become the idol of teenagers who fancy themselves artistic and dark. And while it's not hard to see how Burton's trademark macabre and misfit-as-the-hero movies appeal to those leaving childish things behind, Burton has drawn much criticism of late for stylistically repeating himself to the point, some would argue, of self-parody. Personally, while I recognize the validity of these criticisms and would like to see Burton expand as an artist (for which there is still plenty of time; Clint Eastwood is twice his age and is still cranking 'em out every year), to me Tim Burton is like a Hostess cupcake: not the greatest of its kind, not particularly good for you, but reliable in quality. You know what you're getting before you open the package. I think whether Burton works or not for any individual person depends on how much they like the Tim Burton aesthetic to begin with. And being a teenager who fancies himself artistic and dark, I'm usually on board for anything with Burton's name on it.

Although his films have always been associated with terms like "twisted" and "dark," Tim Burton's movies--Alice in Wonderland included--are only dark in design. The Burton canon may stylistically be full of looming shadows and twisting staircases, but the typical Burton tone is lighthearted and in fact often campy. There's nothing wrong with this style, but it is a mistake to think that Burton's films are dark in anything but atmosphere. And I think there was an incorrect assumption about Alice before the film came out that Tim Burton was "at last going to give the source material a fittingly spooky adaptation, unlike the watered down Disney version."The original Disney Alice in Wonderland, however, is actually much darker than Burton's film. Burton's Wonderland is clearly, and at one point literally, divided into "good" and "evil." The White Queen, the Mad Hatter, and the like are Alice's friends and protectors. Despite the movie's insistent (and annoying) winks that all the characters are "mad," Wonderland is less threatening than Narnia. Which is precisely what's wrong with Burton's Alice: it turns what could have been a surreal, dangerous story into a watered down The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. By contrast, the animated Alice in Wonderland is one of Disney's darkest movies. In that film, Wonderland is a wild and strange place, one that is hostile and uninterested in the plight of its child protagonist. At times, Wonderland threatens to swallow Alice up whole. Burton's film contains neither this sense of danger nor one of wonder.

Instead, the Tim Burton Wonderland is tame, dull, and rife with cliches. While the film is at first able to subdue its more trite elements with visual boldness and sharp CGI, the movie's awful last act is enough to push Alice from being a barely good film to being a disappointingly mediocre one. At one point in the film's conclusion, after an (anti-)climactic battle, Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter character begins to dance in celebration, and for one horrifying moment, it appears that the film is going to turn into Shrek. Fortunately, the scene ends before this can happen, but not before it tosses the audience's goodwill to the wind. The movie's final scene, in which Alice conveniently wraps up all the film's hanging dilemmas in one monologue, hammers the final nail into the film's coffin.

While Tim Burton's artistry is usually enough to carry even the director's weaker films, this one cannot be helped. I'd like to lay the blame on the hackneyed screenplay, but Burton is a good enough filmmaker that he should've known and corrected the script's weaker aspects. Unfortunately, Alice in Wonderland is nothing more than Lewis Carroll's classic novel churned through the Hollywood family film formula as presented through Tim Burton's typically morbid visuals. It is Burton's worst film since Planet of the Apes.

Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire

I saw the film Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire under unusual circumstances. My school was hosting a screening of Precious with an inferior copy of the film: the aspect ratio had been pan and scanned, the image quality was blurred and indistinct, and the volume was left at an earshatteringly loud level throughout the whole screening. Bizarrely though, I think all these setbacks might have ultimately benefited the movie. In reviews of Precious, I've seen the movie accused of overt sentimentality, melodrama, and a purposeful desire to warm hearts and elicit tears. If these accusations have some truth to them, that truth was all but nonexistent in the low quality copy of Precious that I saw. Precious, in the format screened by my college, is as emotionally draining a film as Requiem for a Dream or Grave of the Fireflies. The bleary and cropped video presentation stripped away the film's intended cinematic gloss and replaced it with a visual presence akin to old home video recordings. The inadvertently created effect was an almost uncomfortable intimacy with the proceedings onscreen, and its spell was only broken when the film occasionally veered into fantasy. Further enhancing the stiflingly close atmosphere that the screening's video unintentionally begat was the screening's loudness which was so piercing and intense that any sentimentality the film might have provoked was wiped away and replaced with a deep-seated, jittery unease in the audience. I would have to view the film again in its intended format before I passed final judgment on it, but grading solely the copy of the movie I saw, Precious is as disturbing and moving a film as they come, and is one of 2009's best movies.

Paranormal Activity

After the much-hyped Cloverfield fizzed out at the box office in just two weekends, it seemed like the found footage genre was fated for a long period of dormancy. One year after Cloverfield's
release, however, Paranormal Activity came seemingly out of nowhere and generated over the course of a few weeks as much hype as Cloverfield's massively complex marketing campaign took months to accrue. Making over six thousand times its production budget at the box office, Paranormal Activity proved that found footage films are well and alive, and we can surely expect to see more than a few “shaky-cam” movies rolling out this very year. (Rumor has it that Paranormal director Oren Peli has already completed filming on his next project, called Area 51, and it should be released this fall.)

One of the marks of a great horror film is its ability to successfully imbue an ordinary object with an aura of evil. The Ring had its VHS tape, Poltergeist had its toy clown, and now Paranormal Activity has its bedroom. Given the monetary constraints of the filmmakers, virtually none of the scares in Paranormal depend on CGI or graphic violence. This restraint actually works to the film’s benefit, however, as it forces Paranormal Activity to adapt a style reminiscent of horror classics like Robert Wise’s The Haunting. Every creaking floorboard raises hairs, and the film’s biggest jumps come from slamming doors rather than perverse sadism. The movie also neatly sidesteps the problem most found footage films run into, which is why exactly a character in the film continues to record the madness around him. Rather than largely ignoring this problem as Cloverfield did, Paranormal Activity makes the insistence of its documentarian to continue filming a dramatic key point of the movie, as it drives its two leads further and further apart. The growing distance between Paranormal’s protagonists coalesces with the rising presence in the film of the supernatural, and the two themes meet in the movie’s emotionally draining final scene.* Although the ending is a gut punch, it’s not a heavy enough blow to make us forget how much fun we had during the rest of the movie. On old school scares, Paranormal Activity delivers.

*On the dvd of Paranormal Activity, one can choose to watch the film with its new or with its original ending. I chose the former and after completing the movie, I went back and watched the
original ending as well. The theatrical ending, I believe, is the superior one. The entire film has been building to a manifestation of the supernatural, and the original ending doesn’t provide this closure nearly as well as the movie’s new ending does. Either ending is overwhelmingly bleak though, a trend amongst recent horror films (The Mist, Drag Me to Hell, Open Water, Cloverfield, etc) that I am growing rather tired of.

Big Fan

Paul Aufiero is a New York Giants fan and little else. A schlubby loser and all too aware of it, Paul sinks into a sort of self-induced coma whenever forced to confront reality. We watch Paul, dead-faced and long-hardened by a life of misery and failure, as he punches parking tickets at the garage he works at and as he sits through his nephew's birthday surrounded by family members whose wretchedness he knows is eclipsed only by his own. Paul's life is a monotonous series of defeats. Rather than step up to change his life, Paul has opted to instead seek escape. He doesn't just follow the New York Giants. He lives through them. 'How can a sports game ever really be important?' is a question often asked. For Paul, nothing else is more important. And it is that Paul has invested his entire emotional well-being into a meaningless enterprise (and one whose success Paul has no effect over) that Big Fan director Robert D. Siegel finds the paradox that defines Big Fan's sad and confused protagonist.

In the scene that sets Paul's life off its mundane course, Paul and his friend spot Giants' quarterback Quantrell Bishop at a gas station and follow him into a club where they eventually confront him. We have seen before how Paul obsesses over Bishop, defending the player on his local radio's call-in sports talk program and proudly wearing Bishop's jersey during each Giants game. Bishop is the Giants' star player, and he is thus Paul's star too. Siegel subtly suggests with lingering camera movements over Bishop's physique as Paul glances at his poster of the QB that Paul's infatuation with the man might be even partly sexual. Unfortunately for Paul though, by a misunderstanding and a few ill-placed remarks from Paul's friend, Bishop turns on his adorer, beating Paul so severely that it isn't for three days until Paul finally awakens in the hospital. The police want to press charges against Bishop and Paul's family urges him to sue. However, doing so, Paul knows, would jeopardize the Giants' playoff chances. Paul now finds himself in the realization of a lifelong dream but in the form a nightmare: his choices actually affect his team, but what's best for his team is neither just nor best for him.

Paul's struggle to cope with the fantasy world of the Giants' now representing not an escape for Paul but only more cold, hard reality leads to a Giants fan/Eagles fan confrontation that contains more genuine suspense than if the actual two teams were to clash. Donning an Eagles jersey and smearing his face with the green and white colors of the Giants' rivals, Paul enters the Philly bar where he knows lurks his enemy: a Giants-loathing Eagles fan who calls into the same sports radio program that Paul does. As we watch Paul stumble further and further into the bar, draped in the garb he has so come to hate and surrounded by cheering, beer-swilling Eagles fans, we know that for Paul, this journey is no less than a descent into hell. The brilliant irony of this scene is that it is filmed in such a way as to call back to our minds an earlier scene of celebrating, beer-guzzling Giants fans who, aside from their different-colored attire, are in no way distinguishable from the Eagles fans. Paul is so tied to his world of delusion that he fails to make this connection, and for him the Eagles fans are the epitome of all that is evil. As the scene goes on, Paul's face is transformed by the colored paint into something of a grotesque clown's, laughing one moment and contorting into horror by what he is doing the next.

In Big Fan, Robert Siegel takes a long, hard look at those face-painted, adoring sports fans for whom a game is so much more than a game. The result is an intimate character study and a thematic exploration of obsession, both why it develops and how dangerous it can be. In the film's final scene, both chilling and darkly humorous, Siegel suggests that for some, delusion will always triumph over reality. "There's always next year" has never sounded so bleak.

Where the Wild Things Are

There are spoilers in this essay if you haven't seen the film. You have been warned.

One way I can usually gauge the greatness of a movie is by observing how long the movie lingers in my mind after I've seen it. No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, and Wall-E, for instance, remained in my thoughts months after I'd seen them. The Informant!, on the other hand, I enjoyed but it had so little impact on me that I'd practically forgotten that I'd seen it not but thirty minutes after walking out the theater. Where the Wild Things Are, it seems, is a film that will sit in the ranks of the former group of movies. It's been over a day since I've seen the film and I have yet to shake its sad and beautiful tone from my mind. All of this is indication to me that I've just seen a Great Movie. And so, if you'll allow me, here are my thoughts on the film...

One interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are that I've seen in a lot of critical analyses of the film is that it's about "being a kid." I think that's certainly part of what the movie is about, but I feel like that's overlooking a crucial element of the movie. Let's turn to the movie's screenwriters to illustrate what I mean. Oft neglected in praises of Wild Things is Dave Eggers, who co-wrote the film with director Spike Jonze. Unbeknownst to most, Eggers actually co-wrote another film this year, the delightful Away We Go. Perhaps if more people had made this screenplay-credit connection, then more might also have made the critical thematic connection between the two films as well. You see, Where the Wild Things Are isn't just about being a kid, it's about being a kid in a broken family. The film is an exploration of a boy struggling with his parents' divorce.

This is not to say, of course, that the film is only about being a child if the child comes from a broken home. In fact, one of the greatest strengths of the movie is the way it perfectly (and so incredibly effortlessly) captures what it is like to be a nine year old. The desire to build forts. The wild emotional swings. The way a game can instantly turn from fun and laughter to tears and anger. How an adult can thoughtlessly make a remark that will impact a child far more deeply than the remark was intended to (I'm referring here to Max's teacher's comment on the dying of our sun). That Jonze and Eggers have painted one of the truest, boldest portraits of childhood in film to date goes nearly undisputed. It's just that Wild Things runs deeper than that.

One recurring trend I've noticed on Internet boards discussing the film is people trying to determine what aspects of Max's life each Wild Thing embodies. These discussions typically involve lists of each of the characters, describing them in terms like "KW=Max's Sister, Alexander=Max's sensitive side" and so on. While the film certainly does contain a running motif of the Wild Things corresponding to Max's "real world" life, I eschew using the terminology in trying to interpret the film that these Internet commenters employ. It's too much like reducing the film to an equation, and I have to imagine that that's something the makers of the film would highly discourage.

I think a better way to examine the movie is on the basis of what it means to you personally. I know that one goal Spike Jonze strives for is to create films that don't try to elicit a specific emotion from the viewer but that simply let the viewer react to the movie however he or she reacts, with no reaction being a wrong one. That doesn't mean that there's no objective meaning present in Where the Wild Things Are, it just means that your subjective reaction to the work is much more important than how closely your interpretation of the film matches the filmmakers'. That caveat out of the way, let's now turn to my personal interpretation of the film.

One interesting question raised by Where the Wild Things Are is in what sense the fantasy world of the film exists. Is it purely the creation of the child protagonist? Is it some actual, physical world perhaps in some other dimension? Or is it something completely different? The former interpretation tends to be the more popular one but I take issue with that view because it removes the film of any real danger. If Max lives out his adventures entirely in his head, then at no point does his plight pose any true threat to him. Max could've been torn limb from limb by the Wild Things and it wouldn't have really mattered. It would have all just been in his head. This interpretation, I feel, just really cheapens the film. On the other hand, the theory that Wild Things Island is a real geographical location seems highly improbable to me. If this is so, why then do the Wild Things so strongly correspond to Max's life and problems? Also, just where did they come from? How do they reproduce? This theory is equally if not more problematic than the first.

My interpretation of Wild Things World falls somewhere in the middle of these two theories. I think the fantasy island exists both separately from and entirely within Max's mind. The island is a world that does have a real existence apart from Max but that existence resides solely within the minds of lonely children. In other words, the Wild Things are in Max's head, yes, but they're also separate from Max because they're a part of all lonely kids. Well if it's all in Max's head, you might say, then doesn't that theory still pose the problem that Max is never in danger? Well, yes and no. I think there's a critical scene in Where the Wild Things Are that eliminates this problem: when the Wild Things show Max the skeletons of the kings of the past. "You're the first king we haven't eaten," Alexander remarks. The skeletons mean for me all those children who could not overcome their emotional frustration and isolation and essentially were eaten alive by their own emotions. The creatures may be in Max's mind but he is still very much at the risk of being "eaten" by them.

This brings me to something I touched upon before, the idea of the Wild Things as aspects of Max's life. Remember, while it is valid to interpret the movie in this way, don't get too bogged down with who equals who details. The movie is a story, not an equation. That said, I do have my own interpretation of what each of the Wild Things might represent. Let's first think of Wild Things island as Max's journey into his own mind where he can observe his place in the world and his own mental state. Carol, the main Wild Thing, is a proxy for Max, which is why Max is drawn most to him. Other Wild Things represent aspects of Max's personality too. Alexander is Max's insecurity. This is why he is smaller than all the other Wild Things and often feels neglected and not listened to, as Max does in the beginning of the film. Douglas and Ira are perhaps pleasanter aspects of Max, his wisdom and his good sense maybe.

KW, Judith, and the Bull exemplify Max's relationships to his family members. I've seen people characterize KW and Judith as "Judith=Max's mom" and "KW=Max's sister," but I disagree with that interpretation. I think KW and Judith are both Max's mom and Max's sister. Judith is the nagging, frustrated mom and sister of Max who yell at him and make him feel angry and insecure. KW is the loving, tender mom and sister of Max who Carol, representative of Max, is afraid of losing. "She only wants to hang out with her new friends, Bob and Terry," Carol tells Max.

Later in the movie, when KW introduces Max to Bob and Terry, we discover that they are two snowy white owls. All the Wild Things seem to understand the owls, but to Max and Carol the owls' speech sounds only like mindless hoots. This frustrates Carol who then lashes out at KW and her owl friends, causing KW to retreat further from Carol and Carol to grow all the more desperate and alone.

Here we've hit at the core of the film, I believe. Bob and Terry are, in the real world, the people who would take Max's mother and sister away from him: Mom's new boyfriend and Sister's new friends. Max doesn't understand the conversations of any of these new figures in his life; to them, they're just opponents taking his family away from him. So he yells and stomps and acts like a Wild Thing. And his mother and sister don't understand why he's doing what he's doing, and Max doesn't know how better to express himself. The emotional gap between them only further widens. That, I think, is a large part of what the movie is about: the inability of children to communicate their emotions to adults. A lot of people have interpreted the ending of the movie as a happy one, but I'm not so sure. In the final scene of the movie, not a single word transpires between Max and his mother. They just look at each other, completely in love, but still utterly unable to express themselves.

This brings me at last to what I claimed was the heart of the film: Max's parents' divorce. In the opening segment of Where the Wild Things Are, we only see the briefest glimpses of Max's father. He is an item resting on Max's shelf. He is the man who should be talking to, sitting with, and loving Max's mother (and Max). He is his own absence. In the Wild Things world, Jonze portrays this through The Bull. A somber, silent figure throughout the film, The Bull resides in the background, lingering, hanging over Max's world. He is not Max's father, he is the absence of Max's father. A conspicuous glaring reminder of something that should be but isn't, always looming over everything else.

And while the film is still about the communication gap between children and adults, the film suggests this gap can only be overcome when a child is given a whole and loving family. Max's life becomes a demonstration of how shattered a child's world is when it's set in a broken home. Max is deeply attached to his mother. Her new boyfriend is tearing her away from him, he thinks. This terrifies him. So he goes crazy which drives his mother further away.

If Max only had a caring father in his life, his mother wouldn't have a new boyfriend to upset him so. And while, yes, Max's sister is going to slip away from Max regardless of Max's parents' state, I think Max's bond with his mother is much more important to him (and he's much more afraid of losing of her) than he is with his sister. The film, then, is essentially saying this: "Children and adults are incapable of truly understanding each other. If a child is given a loving mother and father, then this will almost certainly prevent the child from having emotional issues. If a child is deprived of both a loving mother and father though, this will deeply emotionally wound the child and because, as we said before, children and adults can't communicate, a broken family may, like the Wild Things, eat the child up."

That is the core of the film reduced to a few sentences, I think. I realize I must've written a few pages' worth of material now and I still feel as though I've only scratched the surface of the film in this essay. There are so many moments of pure cinematic beauty that I haven't even mentioned yet. For instance, that transitional shot between the real world and the fantasy world--a wide shot of Max in his little boat, enveloped by a sea so dark and enormous that in one moment we know we're no longer in the real world--was my favorite part in the film. The music too I have thus far neglected to mention. How haunting, mournful, and poetic a quality those plaintive Karen O songs and that Carter Burwell score brought to the movie. I don't think pop music has been used in film to conjure a very specific and entirely unique tone this effectively since Juno two years ago. And Max... Max Records is one of the most gifted child actors in history. I have never seen a truer portrayal of a child onscreen before and I doubt I ever will again. If that boy is not nominated for a Best Actor Oscar this winter, the Academy will have committed an unforgivable snub.

But I suppose I should stop reciting the film's technical merits before I fall into the realm of hyperbole (which I probably have already). This review is long enough as it is, and I'm more than sure I've violated that ancient rule of writing "Say only what you need to say and then shut up." I hope you enjoyed reading this review, if you actually made it this far. I wrote it mostly to extract and organize my own thoughts on the film for my own benefit, but if this review helped you appreciate the film more, then all the better. If you found that you didn't like Where the Wild Things Are on your first viewing, I encourage you to go back and revisit the film. I think it will grow on you with time. After all, there's a Wild Thing in all of us.