A Teeny Boppin' Trek

The future is a busy place. The future is fast. The future is bright. The future is so busy and fast and bright that endless axis-spinning and whip-pans and lens-flares can't capture all the action. Which doesn't really matter, since there's nothing really interesting going on anyway. Basically, the future is a lame television show. A very slickly produced television show, viewed on the world's biggest HDTVs.

The future is also pretty. Not a beautiful, eminent vision of the future like Metropolis, it's pretty. It's filled with stick-figure super-model looking women who look like they've eaten a piece of bread over the course of the last month and androgynous pretty-boy pinups that represent our culture's definition of masculinity. Which is to say that Chris Pine's Captain Kirk and Zachary Quinto's Spock conform to our culture's vanity--- they have nice, inoffensive faces that you can plaster on Magazine covers and soda cups from fast-food chains. As with previous Abrams' products--- Alias, Lost, Cloverfield, I felt less like I was watching actors and more like I was watching models strut up a celluloid catwalk. And it all comes complete with the glossy slickness that has becomes Abrams' defining trait, unfortunately.

Which isn't to say that everyone isn't mostly enjoyable in their roles--- I found Pine grating at first, but then I found the film's entire first act (the prelude to the space trekkin') to be generally awful--- Star Trek meets The O.C.. Eventually, though, I settled into the movie's vibrations and accepted it for what it was and--- wait for it, actually had a little bit of fun, too. Quinto does seem to be channeling a young Leonard Nimoy without doing an outright imitation--- no easy task, and Pine rises above his material and proves himself to be an engaging screen presence with this feature. It's amusing seeing Eric Bana take a role so campy and ridiculous so agonizingly seriously, but the man is seriously dedicated to giving the most stone-faced high-camp performance in blockbuster history. Everyone else performs admirably, if not particularly memorably.

But the act of viewing J.J. Abrams' Star Trek is most unfortunate. There's an extremely enjoyable movie trapped somewhere in this mildly enjoyable one, and this leads to a frustrating viewing experience. And, while the script isn't exactly Chayefsky, it's really Abrams' directing that sucks the fun out of the movie. Star Trek has been written off as 'big-screen TV' by quite a few critics, and I don't really think that's fair, as that implies that all TV has a bland aesthetic . J.J. Abrams himself proved that notion wrong with the pilot of Lost, which managed to combine an aesthetic and rhythmic sense of action with a Producer's sense of economic storytelling (it's comparable to Spielberg's Duel, in that sense). Unfortunately, this mogul sensibility gets the better of Star Trek.

The opening sequence establishes that any sense of spacial relation would be simply non-existent. If you were to think of the camera as a dancer, then Abrams has two left feet. His camera is constantly obtrusive, continually denying the audience the satisfaction of knowing where objects within the frame are in relation to one another. The lack of camera choreography in action scenes continually deprives us clear-views of the action; the individual shots reveal little to no space within the frame, and the pictorial rhythm is such that it makes the act of trying to figure out where things are in the geographic sense a trying effort. His dialogue sequences are more satisfying, but still a rather limp-dick affair; Abrams uses nothing but the most basic of set-ups to flesh out his characters: wide shot, over the shoulder close-ups, shot/reverse shot. It's an aesthetic syntax that wears out its welcome pretty quickly--- ineffective at best and irritating at worst. You know you have a problem when you find yourself missing Christopher Nolan's bumbling, which is at least singular, distinct bumbling. Abrams just has a bland demographic pandering sensibility.

Which is especially disappointing as his first feature, the third Mission: Impossible movie, also pointed to a talent. Unlike Star Trek, which is all pitched at the same bombastic frequency, Abrams actually mixed up the technique with that feature; he used a myriad of tools at his disposal and this led to a much more satisfying viewing experience. In the pilot for Lost and M:I 3, each shot is an effective part of a visual tapestry, but it doesn't seem like there's any purpose with respect to the image succession in Star Trek. I never thought I'd see a large-scale blockbuster that seemed like it didn't use storyboards, like the shots are thrown together with no rhyme or reason; but, if ever there was one, Star Trek is it.

What we're left with is a slickly produced piece of market-sharing. Star Trek was made by a committee dedicated to making the inclusive Star Trek more main-stream and accessible, not a man with a vision. Ultimately, Abrams' take on the cosmos and their mystery is diminishing and uninspiring. Its 'humanist' thought is tacked on and disingenuous; a regurgitation of blather from the series instead of a fresh, invigorating take on pop-culture folk-lore. Compare this with other film makers who simultaneously over-powered you with spectacle, but used this spectacle to heighten your senses and expand your understanding of the world around you: Lang, Kubrick, Spielberg, De Palma, Scott--- and suddenly Arbams' teeny bopping vision of the spoiled, entitled, petulant young Enterprise crew seems particularly tacky and pointless. Whereas other film makers have heightened cosmic contact to religious experiences, Abrams still casts the 'other' in a generic monster role. How far we haven't come.

5 by Godard (in color!)

Over at Bill's pad, The Kind of Face You Hate, a post about the great Val Lewton segued into a discussion as to the merits of Godard's more 'minimalist' black and white films versus his more 'formal' color pictures. Since I've been inundated with finals and projects and the like, my time to waste with my fellow movie nerds (I mean that affectionately) has been cut down severely, and I missed out on a fascinating discussion with my pals Bill, Ed, and Greg about one of my personal favorites (it was already several posts ago at Bill's blog, damn you guys and your commitment to updating!). So consider this my own bumbling contribution to that particular thread. I'll look at five of Godard's first six seven color features, and try to explain why his use of color has so impacted the way I watch movies.

I don't know if a film maker has ever taught me more about screen color and its implications than Jean-Luc Godard. This is, after all, the film maker who understood that sex, communism, and blood all register the same to the eye--- on the screen, it's red. From his debut film Breathless, his agenda has been highly formalist (though certainly not strictly formalist), and his color films were a natural continuation of his rumination on the psychological and cultural powers of cinema. The above pictured moment from Contempt, his first film in Cinemascope, typifies in many ways the self-reflective way Godard treated the medium. He turns the camera on the audience, inviting us to see the illusory power of cinema through a looking glass.

Take a look at the scene from Contempt that introduces the married couple played by Michael Piccoli and Brigitte Bardot. The legend is that Godard was forced to shoot a nude scene with Bardot by the studio, because they wanted to return their investment on their investment in Bardot, who was seen as a sex symbol of the time (though that's truly something that's lost on me). His use of color speaks volume about their relationship from the moment the movie begins.

We would normally associate a dark shade of red with intimacy and passion, and Godard subversively uses this effect to highlight their emotional distance from each other. He gives us nudity without eroticism (and no, this whole post is not just an excuse to show Bardot's ass , thankyouverymuch).

And, in an instant, what little illusion of intimacy there was is shattered, with a return to 'natural' lighting. If it wasn't already, the type of relationship these two characters have is already very clearly spelled out.

Then, he switches to a blue hue to highlight the coldness of their relationship. Again, the color usage has an instant psychological association and its the colors that convey the ideas, both narrative and formal, of the scene.

Cinemascope wasn't meant for human beings. Just for snakes - and funerals.

-Fritz Lang in Contempt

So, moving on to Godard's second color feature Pierrot le Fou, the way he treats cinema as a big-screen canvas comes even more clearly into focus.

In the beginning of the film, Godard wants to give us an impression of how Ferdinand/Pierrot's nice, quiet home life is suffocating in order to align our sympathies with the little road trip that Ferdinand is about to take with Anna Karina. Notice the way the colors the little girl is wearing matches the colors of the bathroom. A little detail like that gives us the impression of how uniform his life is and how Ferdinand's existence is defined by routine.

When he goes to a party early in the film, Godard uses colors to seduce us into the nightlife--- we've escaped the tranquility of his home-life, and gone into the enticing world of drinks, celebrities, and sex. Again, the color contrast is what defines this narrative thread. Godard wants us to sympathize with the with Ferdinand's gravitation towards a new life of lust, danger, and adventure.

Later on in the film, as Karina is attempting to entice Ferdinand to join him, the use of light and color is essential to fleshing out the psychological state of the two main characters. As they drive discussing their plans, flashing , blurred light blinds these characters to reason. It's an incredibly romantic, visually extravagant scene--- among my favorite moments in Godard's filmography (that I've seen).

At the end of the film, Ferdinand has reached the end of this rope and has gone somewhat insane (skip the next image and paragraph if you don't want Pierrot le Fou spoiled for you).

He's a little upset, as you can see... you might even say he's feeling blue! (bwahahaha) Godard literalizes the concept of 'being blue' visually, having his character paint his face blue to externalize his internal feelings of suffering. It's a stroke that is simultaneously ironic, tragic, and hilarious.

The next feature I'll be looking at, Made in U.S.A., is an effective bridge between the more playful, genre driven style of Pierrot le Fou and the more politically driven films I'll be taking a look at a little later on--- La Chinoise and Weekend (which is not to imply in any way that Pierrot le Fou is apolitical--- just less politically charged than the next three).

"It's like being in a Disney film with Humphrey Bogart", Anna Karina's character Paula Nelson says amidst the mad-cap absurdity of Made in U.SA., and that more or less encapsulates the formal and genre rumination Godard was attempting with this film. He tests our dependence on genre familiarity by giving us the most bizarre kind of mash-up imaginable; combining the eye poppingly-colorful and extravagant world of a Disney picture with the inward melancholy of film noir.

I tend to use the word 'test' in relation to Godard at all, and I don't mean to give the impression that he's strictly academic. His love of genre is always apparent, but the genre conventions are often a mask for queries into the nature of art. He breaks cinema down to its essentials--- to image and sound. There's a key sequence in Made in U.S.A. when he removes the soundtrack completely and we're just left with images--- which is actually very reminiscent of the "Meet the Soundtrack" segment of Fantasia--- where the artifice aspect is flaunted and used to investigate the physiological way images and sound affect us.

And Made in U.S.A. is just a colorful blast of a film, an absolute feast for the eyes. Hell, Karina's dress is more colorful than most other entire movies. Again, Godard's use of color here is painterly and eye-popping.


Of all the features I've discussed, color probably plays the most important role in the politically charged La Chinoise, a film that simultaneously documents and critiques leftist politics. La Chinoise stands as a fascinating time-capsule of the atmosphere that led to the 1698 student revolts, though the movie is in no way a call to arms. Rather, because Godard strikes me as the sort of person who doesn't want to agree with anyone about anything ever, he is critical of the drone-like way youth-culture is indoctrinated to the ideas of communism (or any philosophy) , how they simply go along with the parlance of their times rather than truthfully analyzing the philosophy itself--- they regurgitate the ideas they read in their endless stacks of red books, but they don't necessarily take the ideals to heart, much less think seriously about them. Are they even aware of what they're endorsing?

Naturally red plays an important factor in the movie, and Godard toys with the way we associate red with communism throughout the picture (there's hardly a frame that doesn't contain some element of red), and this is perhaps when his use of color most clearly plays a role in the narrative syntax because they are a large part of what convey the film's political ideas. "We should replace vague words with clear images", text at the beginning of the film says, and Godard's use of color is what illuminates the ultimate socio-political meaning of the images. His images are truly worth a thousand words.


Moving on to the final feature I'm going to discuss today, Weekend, Godard's bright, high contrast use of colors that I've been discussing here is replaced with a more saturated color tonality--- perhaps Godard turning away from what he called film's bourgeoisie history. But this doesn't mean that Godard's color minimalism with Weekend is any less vital to the general tone of the film than his previous, more colorful films.

An early sequence has the main couple discussing the woman's sexual experience in a manage-a-trois. Godard holds the camera statically and keeps them in silhouette for what feels like an agonizingly long period of time, and the lack of clearly-defined colors here is as important as the abundance of it in his previous features. Keeping them in the shadows allows us to focus on the grotesqueness of what is being described, and this is in keeping with the film's modus operandi, making us uncomfortable in our own skin.


This is certainly when Godard became more of a blatnat polemicist, and I think the lack of an extravagant color-palette is part of what is touted as his stylistic 'return to zero'. Also, Godard is capturing the French country side in this movie, and I think he wants human beings to be just another part of that expansive landscape--- perhaps even an unnatural part. So the use of color is still there and still vital, it's just used to express a different sect of narrative ideas.


So, to me, his use of color is a large part of Godard's appeal--- he was one of the first film makers to show me what the power of carefully thought out and arranged color elements within a frame--- the ideas they can express on the narrative, formal, and even political level. It's the painterly aspect of cinema that so few artists have embraced quite as blatantly as Godard did. I don't know if his black and white films would qualify as more minimalist in tone--- La Chinoise and Weekend are stylistically less flamboyant than a film like Breathless, which announces from its opening frame that it's going to play with genre and form in a very blatant way. La Chinoise and Weekend are actually more minimalist in tone than some of his earlier black and white pictures--- establishing simple visual motifs and then mixing them up to further the motions of character and plot along. But the intrinsic appeal of Godard to me is that visual sensibility--- the way he uses colors and their psychological association to express his core narrative.

Roy & Me

When I did the characters meme a while back, I knew in my heart that I had left off a film character that is of vital importance to me, one that I identify with on both a personal and cosmic level. But I also didn't want to write a quick paragraph to attempt to convey my feelings, either, so it was probably best that I save it for a separate entry. In Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Richard Dreyfuss' Roy Neary is awakened to the profound beauty and mystery of the Universe through contact with extra-terrestrial life forms.

This is a concept that has always intrinsically appealed to me, that of spiritual transcendence via interplanetary contact. Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and De Palma's Mission to Mars are the only films I can think of besides Spielberg's film that liken extra-terrestrial contact to a religious experience. In terms of practical, scientific concepts of God, alien life would be just about the closest we could come in the known Universe. The notion that we're not alone in the Universe is one that is extremely humbling, and the notion of life reaching out to other life is one that I've always found to be incredibly profound. Close Encounters of the Third Kind doesn't cast the aliens into a generic monster role--- though it does acknowledge that fear is a natural reaction to alien contact, but rather these aliens are benevolent harbingers of goodwill. Which makes sense, as I can't imagine life-forms making their way across the Universe (can you imagine the traffic?) simply to blow the shit out of us, as so many films seem to depict (including Spielberg's own War of the Worlds).

Since Spielberg is a deeply spiritual film maker, it's no wonder that he would treat the idea of alien contact with a God-like awe. He recognizes that religion, art, and science are all separate means to the same end: to better comprehend the world around us. Spielberg is criticized for so often using aliens as plot devices in his films, but I don't see this as a problem. The profound rumination on narrative in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull seemed to fly over the heads of the Nuke the Fridge crowd, who were more interested in focusing on trivial semantics than sub-textual meaning. Spielberg's interchanging of religion and science fiction as the central McGuffin is actually a perfect articulation of the themes of emotional and psychological interchangeability that he has been making films about most of his career. And it started with Close Encounters.

But these themes of cosmic and spiritual wonder could not be properly expressed without the deeply moving performance of Richard Dreyfuss as Roy Neary. In Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, humankind is given a stand-in in the form of Keir Dullea's Dave Bowman. Kubrick was an artist who analyzed humanity on the macro-cosmic level, from the top down (some have called this approach 'cold', though I don't agree), and thus Dave Bowman is lacking in a truly identifiable personality, since he's essentially a stand-in for us all. Spielberg, conversely, is an artist who works on the microcosmic level and thus is deeply emotionally involved in the odyssey of Roy Neary, whom he is clearly using as a stand-in for himself. It's the only time he's put himself on screen in such a blatant way.

Though there is a big difference between the first cut of the film and the 1997 edition, my preferred cut of the film, and that focus is what I feel makes the difference between a flawed work of undeniable vision and a perfect distillation of a mature artist. The original 1977 cut of Close Encounters of the Third Kind is kind of all over the place and the parts lack cohesiveness, to the point that they almost feel disjointed from the whole. This is because the 1977 edition hones in less on the Roy Neary narrative, and thus the film has no real emotional center. Rather, the 1977 cut has an ideological focus instead, and this makes it feel almost like an Altman-esque network narrative. While the intent is certainly ambitious, ultimately, I don't feel as though it works as strongly as it could have. I love the movie in all its forms (and I plan on writing about the three versions here at Medfly someday), but I also feel that Spielberg's maturation over the course of 20 years ultimately helped make the film everything it should have been in the first place. He found the film's emotional center in the odyssey of Roy Neary over that time, and thus found his voice.

I saw an interview with Spielberg where he described where he got the idea to make Close Encounters (naturally, I have been unable to find the interview subsequently, otherwise I'd post it). He was driving alone at night and came to a large, empty field. He stopped there and laid looking at the night sky, and suddenly he got the vision of a UFO landing in the exact spot he was, and the aliens inviting him to go with them. He honestly thought to himself about what he would do in the event that this situation arose--- and came to the conclusion that he wouldn't go with aliens, in spite of his curiosity. This notion bothered him so much that he left his spot as quickly as he could.

So, Close Encounters of the Third Kind is in part about dealing with the fear of alien contact as well as the massive psychological weight that such a revelation would carry with it. When Roy Neary first sees the flying saucer, its light is literally overpowering; it blinds him, burns him, and damns him in a sense. It awakens his senses to something beyond his job, his wife, his children, and even his planet--- but there are consequences to this enlightenment. This knowledge comes with a very deep price, as Roy Neary's simple life has been forever altered, for better or worse. The light, or rather the light's implications, consume him to the point where he is at the very edge of sanity.

On a shallow level, we could say Spielberg made this film about running away from parental responsibility. Roy goes on a roller coaster ride with funny looking little men to get out of being a husband, father, and working a 9-5. But Close Encounters of the Third Kind takes the decision Roy has to make seriously, acknowledging the damage that Roy's obsession was causing within his family. Though this is another aspect underdeveloped in the 1977 cut, because Roy himself is underdeveloped--- Spielberg skirts around the issue of parental abandonment in the original cut, perhaps because he's scared of it. Because Close Encounters in its original form is about avoiding parental responsibility, Spielberg more or less spends the scenes with Roy's family building a case for Roy's eventual abandonment of them--- in the 1997 cut, the issue certainly isn't as cut and dry, because he more vividly paints a picture of Roy's family dynamics. Again, Spielberg's maturation over 20 years helped him flesh out themes that were initially only on the surface.

Like Lynch's Eraserhead, made the same year, Close Encounters also articulates apprehensions about being a father--- about resigning yourself to being a 'family man'. Spielberg has said that, if he'd made the film today, he never would have had Roy Neary leave his wife and kids behind--- because, having become a father, he knows in his heart that's something he would never do, regardless of the circumstance. This is understandable, but Close Encounters of the Third Kind was made before he was a father, and what we're left with is a film that shrugs parental responsibility in favor of a joy-ride round the Universe. Maybe it's my youth, but the idea of having children pretty much makes me want to run to the hills, so this is another aspect of Roy that I connect with. Maybe if I were a father, I would think of this character differently.

I think we've all felt like we simply didn't belong at some point in our life. The feeling of isolation can lead us to dark places. This is, of course, an ongoing theme in Spielberg's career (E.T., Empire of the Sun, Amistad, A.I., and The Terminal have that theme as their either main or tertiary focus), and it's probably a large part of why I connect with his films. He so perfectly enters the subjective frame of mind of the 'outsider' that we feel like we're there with him, on the outside looking in. In High School, when I first saw the film, the idea of leaving the world behind and going on a transcendental journey of cosmic enlightenment is one that struck a deep personal chord (especially having just seen 2001: A Space Odyssey a few months before). I remember feeling like, in many ways, High School was actually suffocating my internal growth and quest for knowledge, and Spielberg's film is one of the key experiences that awakened me to things beyond my day-to-day existence.

It's Richard Dreyfuss' eyes that speak to me most in the performance, and the sad longing that they convey. The notion that something inexplicable, intangible, is just missing. Since the beginning of mankind, we have looked to the stars for answers as to our place among them, and we have channeled these existential queries into our art. Spielberg takes this one-step further by making the stars themselves the answer--- that wordless, cosmic mystery that drives us to make sculptures out of our dinner and found garbage. The childlike awe that is the only reasonable reaction to a notion so extraordinary. He conveys these mind expanding and earth-shattering themes through Roy Neary, which is why the character touches my heart in a way like no other character does.

Characters with Character

Oh dear. I've been tagged, it seems. An internet meme (some would say plague, but not I...) has been taking over the world of blogger, and that meme involves bloggers listing their 'favorite' movie characters. Greg over at Cinema Styles has tagged me so, if you find this painful, go over there and yell at him. Seriously, you have my blessing.

Characters are our emotional gateway into the themes a movie presents, so it's natural that there would be some who would strike a deep personal chord with us. We see something of ourselves in them, like a mirror in motion. I'm not going to pretend that this list represents my unequivocal favorites, but today, this is what feels right. So here ya go, in chronological order:

Emil Jannings as Hotelportier, The Last Laugh (1924, F.W. Murnau)

It's hard not to love a character who gets the last laugh, who rises out of the muck to join the prestigious ranks of the upper class, by sheer chance. The legend is that they forced Murnau to change the ending from what it originally was, which had the Hotelportier dying in the same washroom he was once the attendant of. Personally, I love the film, 'compromised' ending and all, and its delicious irony is part of the joy of it. The title The Last Laugh would be kinda irrelevant without that final scene, honestly.

Jacques Tati as Hulot

(Mr. Hulot's Holiday (1953), Mon Oncle (1958), Playtime (1967) & Trafic (1971), Jacques Tati)

Again, it's hard not to love Hulot. He's a bumbling, clumsy, accident proned observer of all of humanity's foibles. While the silent comedies from which Tati was inspired derived their laughs from the characters getting annoyed at the main character, Hulot never seems to inspire anger or outrage, no matter how badly he screws a situation up (though, in Mr. Hulot's Holiday, it seems that the characters are oblivious to the fact that he's the one who causes the mayhem). But the fact that he's funny is not why I love Hulot so much (though that's certainly part of it); it's because he is one of humanity's sharpest observers, always lurking in the background, observing us with an eye that is simultaneously loving, critical, and benevolent.

James Stewart as John 'Scottie' Feguson, Vertigo (1958, Alfred Hitchcock)

One of cinema's great tragic figures, Scottie Ferguson becomes enveloped by love that evolves (or regresses) into obsession. While most of us have never been pushed to the ends that Scottie finally is in the film's heartbreaking, soul-crushing final scene, I think most of us can still identify with not being able to get a person out of your head, no matter how hard you try. You see the person everywhere because they have, in effect, become part of you. His monologue to Kim Novak's character at the end is one of the most intense moments I've ever seen in any film--- his anger, heartbreak, and righteous indignation are all there for the audience to see. When she takes the final plunge, and the mystery woman is out of his life forever, he finds himself right back to where he started. As though she was never even there.

Frank Sinatra as Dave Hirsh in Some Came Running (1958, Vincente Minnelli)

Another tragic figure, this time played by ol' blue eyes in Vincente Minnelli's masterpiece-of-masterpieces, Some Came Running. I love this character because of the way his past literally explodes in his face, and he needs to come to terms with the friends and family he wronged before abandoing them. Along the way he gets mixed up with something of a bad crowd. It's an old and familiar story, but I don't think it's ever unfolded quite like it does in Minnelli's film. Also, here Sinatra plays against his friend, Dean Martin, in some of the finest acted scenes I've ever seen.

Jean-Pierre Leaud as Antoine Doinel

(The 400 Blows (1959), Antoine et Collette (1962) , Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed & Board (1970), Love on the Run (1979), Francois Truffaut)

Watching Antoine Doinel grow from petulant, misunderstood child to petulant, misunderstood young adult to somewhat petulant husband is one of the great joys film has to offer. Brought to life by French New-Wave icon Jean-Pierrre Leaud, the odyssey of Antoine Doinel is just about as enjoyable as it gets. But, like everyone else, it's the image of the directionless young boy alone on a beach that sticks with me to this day. I think we've all been there.

Jean-Paul Belomondo as Pierrot in Pierrot le Fou (1965, Jean-Luc Godard)

Poor Pierrot. As you can see, by the end of his story he gets himself into something of a desperate situation, painting his face a hideous shade of blue and preparing himself to strap dynamite around his cranium. But, can you really blame the guy? He lives a boring, tranquil life with bratty, aggravating children. But he's invited to start a life of crime with the irresistible Anna Karina, and that's when the self-fulfilling Bonnie & Clyde prophecy begins to pan itself out. He and Karina are really just playing out roles they'd seen in dozens of American pictures (notably Nick Ray's They Live By Night). From the moment the journey began, it had to end with Pierrot blowing himself to kingdom come. It just couldn't have gone any other way.

Douglas Rain as HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Stanley Kubrick)

This will probably sound strange, but has there ever been a more human character in films than the immortal HAL 9000? Obviously, he's simply a high-functioning computer, but more profound questions on the nature of humanity have never been raised. The human beings we see in this film are more or less mechanical beings, relying on their technology to do their bidding. But HAL has a soul. He remembers his childhood. He remembers his first teacher. He knows all the words to "A Bicycle Built for Two". The scene where Dave removes his memory is one of the most heartbreaking moments in all of cinema. If humanity is indeed defined by our memories, both individual and collective, then HAL is about as human as they come.

William Finley as Winslow Leach/The Phantom in The Phantom of the Paradise
(1974, Brian De Palma)

A tragic self-fulfilling prophecy, Winslow Leach was just asking for trouble giving his cantata to the insidious Mr. Swan. He'd poured his heart and soul into a full rock-opera version of Faust that he handed over to the record producer Swan in hopes of notoriety, but Swan simply stole the sound and trashed it up and dumbed it down for mainstream consumption (without giving Winslow credit, no less). De Palma's film is one of the most critical takes on what industry does to art, the fundamental differences between the two enterprises; and the character of Winslow Leach is the ultimate sap who gets his life-worked scorned in the name of mainstream pap. It's like the lyrics to the Billy Joel song "The Entertainer"; You've heard my latest record/It's been on the radio/Ah, it took me years to write it/They were the best years of my life/It was a beautiful song/But it ran too long/If you're gonna have a hit/You gotta make it fit/So they cut it down to 3:05. Eventually, Winslow sets himself and everyone else free of Swan, but only by sacrificing himself. I find his death scene deeply moving, even in the context of this kind of goofy post-modern mash-up.

Woody Allen as Harry Block in Deconstructing Harry (1997, Woody Allen)

I probably could have littered this list with Woody Allen characters, but I settled on Harry Block because of the way he channels his life into his work. As Woody Allen says in the film, his character can't function in life, but in art. It's a more hard edged version of my favorite Francois Truffaut quote, "I have always preferred the reflection of life to life itself,". But Woody Allen's film is also about the wall that must be put up between the artist and humanity, in order to effectively capture it. Deconstructing Harry is as profound a rumination on the relationship between art and the artist as Fellini's 8 1/2, and with Woody's trademarked wit. Oh, and it's one of the most deliciously vulgar movies I've ever seen, with profanity elevated to poetry.

Jeff Bridges as the Dude in The Big Lebowski (1998, The Coen Brothers)

Sometimes....there's a man. And that man is The Dude. I know it's something of an obvious choice, and picking him makes me your typical 20-something-stoner-slacker, but that doesn't mean that I don't attempt to embody The Dude's spirit. Jeff Bridges really brings what could have been a cardboard cut-out character to life, and gives him a personality. Not to mention, he has a killer fashion sense.

Jude Law as Gigolo Joe in A.I. (2001, Steven Spielberg)

If anyone ever abandons me in the woods, I sincerely hope I run into a Gigolo Joe. He's just a class act, and he's a lady-killer if ever there was one. Not to mention, his head seems to be a juke-box which plays very romantic old-standards, which helps liven up the mood. I really want one of those. While it is indeed a fantastic character, it's Jude Law's performance that makes the character unforgettable; he carries himself with all the grace of a classic Hollywood icon, and he is consistently a joy to watch. A huge smile just envelops my face whenever he's on screen.

Bill Murray as Steve Zissou in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
(2004, Wes Anderson)

Sometimes you see elements of yourself in a character. Sometimes, you almost feel like the person on the screen is you. And, sometimes, you see yourself and your parent in a character or characters, and in this case it's myself and my father. Steve Zissou being a man simultaneously in awe of the beauty of the world and embittered by his life experience is something I see very much in my father. And the way he gets re-acquainted with a child he'd never known only to have to say goodbye again so soon feels like it was almost transposed from my life, though in my case there wasn't death involved. As for his propensity for marijuana, alcohol, and films...well, yeah, that's me. There are also touches of Werner Herzog in Steve Zissou, his insatiable desire to go out, make films, in spite of the fact that common sense dictates that you should stop. But, as they say, 'this is an adventure'.

Sally Hawkins as Poppy in Happy Go Lucky (2008, Mike Leigh)

Shit, I realize at the end of this post: no women. While Sally Hawkins in last year's Happy-Go-Lucky doesn't necessarily embody strong feminist values, her attitude towards life is one I aspire to have, though in not quite such an outward way as she does it. Being 'happy' isn't something that just happens, it's a moment-to-moment attitude that you either embody or don't. Poppy doesn't let anything or anyone get her down, instead relating to the world in her own bubbly, humorous way. But by the end, she realizes the effect she has on people (both positive and negative) and the consequences of her actions and the actions of others. Poppy is made immortal by a fantastic performance from Sally Hawkins, who is a joy to watch in one of the best films of last year.

So, that's 13, but I don't feel like taking anyone off the list, so you're just gonna have to deal with it. I live by my own rules.

I tag Rob, Keith, Ali, Ted, & Jim. Not that any of you actually look at my blog, but if you did, you'd be tagged.

If Animation Has a Name, Then it Must Be Charles M. Jones

"I’m not particularly known throughout the world for being a conductor of oceans, but I bet I’m one of the best. "

Last week, TCM broadcast the original documentary Chuck Jones: Memories of Childhood, and it was one of the more illuminating half hours of television that I've recently seen. Using a technique similar to that of the recent Oscar nominated short I Met the Walrus and The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation (the creators of the latter short made this film), the documentary animates the recollections of childhood that Jones describes, giving his stream of consciousness explanations of his life an added twinge of poignancy. Also, the cartoon figure that the film uses as a stand-in Jones as a child was drawn by Jones himself. It's a self-portrait in motion.

The film uses segments of an interview conducted with Jones before his death in 2002 to get to the core of his childhood, which helps illuminate why his characters have such universal appeal. They aren't just cartoon archetypes, they represent a portion of his psyche. This is why the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series have had such continuing impact; they aren't just strings of jokes and sight gags, the cartoons are representative of a world view that was shaped by experience.

"When I was two years old I think the event that occurred then probably had a great deal to do with my becoming an animator. Because I fell off a second story back porch on to a hunk of cement. I’m sure that it jostled my brain cells out of any hope that I would be a very logical child."

Watching Jones hand draw the Looney Tunes characters is one of the great joys of this documentary. It adds a personal touch to the characters we're all so familiar with. Jones talks about how these characters are, in essence, a part of the very fabric of his being.

"Pepe, he assumes immediately that he’s irresistible, so that’s actually the opposite of what I felt. I felt I was very resistible. People ask me about whether I’m some of the characters like Pepe. Of course I am, but I’m Daffy Duck, too."

It's this personal touch that separates Jones from the rest. Jones was so obsessive about his work that he believed that a single frame could make the difference between a good joke and a bad joke, and he would go through his films a frame at a time until they were just right. He treated his form like it was music, with every frame being a note in a comedic symphony. His films played with the synchronization of senses that Disney's Silly Symphonies had helped popularize, but I think the Warner Brothers shorts went even deeper with that core idea, because they played with that concept of image and its relation to music in unique, unexpected, and consistently hilarious ways.

The tone that runs through the documentary is one of poignant melancholy. One gets the impression that Chuck Jones was one of those people who had it all figured out, and we were lucky to get a glimpse of that understanding through his work. Many of his films stand out as the very best of the Warner Brothers cartoon catalog, which would put them among the best films ever made, and he among the great film makers. It's incidental that his understanding of humanity took the form of slap-stick one reel cartoons, that's merely the way in which he related to the world. "If I can find the quirk to something, I think I can understand a little bit about it." Perhaps Jones was a forebearer to Wes Anderson in that sense.

Being the shameless self promoter I am, I'd like to use this post as a chance to formally announce what I hope will be a recurring series for Medfly Quarantine, the Looney Tunes Project; where myself, my darling co-curator (still waiting on a contribution from her...), and anyone who feels like contributing will write up a Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies short. Be sure to check back for updates.