Today, I present you with two videos, both of which use nearly the same soundtrack, but with different pictures. This inverts the exercise. Watch them both, then tell me how each made you feel. Don’t think too much, and don’t try to limit yourself by thinking which is better. Just watch and observe your automatic response to each.

I had very different emotional responses to these two videos. Tell me in the comments how you reacted to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuvoSw1TiJ8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5RVSLA92r0

Photo by John Shearer, Getty Images, 2009

Is that person in the aisle seat of the second row videotaping the movie off the screen? Am I the only one who sees this?

Never ever ever videotape a movie in the theater. That’s called stealing, and it’s wrong. Never ever ever encourage this kind of behavior by downloading movies off the Internet. That’s stealing too, and just as wrong.

As for the guy with the pizza, I’m going to assume he asked for and received permission from the theater to bring that in. For more on food in movie theaters, listen to Dr. Diana Hsieh’s Rationally Selfish Radio, Episode #10: Rules and Property Rights.

Update: It turns out that this photo was taken during a Q&A session, not a test screening. Which makes sense, because no one would ever get into a legit test screening with a video camera and a pizza. They wand you for those things. Even still, I doubt videotaping the Q&A session was a good idea, especially since the 3D glasses everyone is wearing suggest that footage was shown. The point about not videotaping or downloading movies is still valid, however. Don’t do it.

Zombieland

I’ve never liked zombie films much, mostly because they are within the post-apocalyptic survival genre I could never get into, since they invariably involve some self-sacrificing dipshit who gets himself killed in order to save the others, or “heroically” gets himself infected so he’s got to be shot before he goes all zombified. Ugh. So it might not sound sufficiently impressive when I say that I had more fun in this zombie film than I’ve ever had in any other zombie film. In fact, it was extremely entertaining. It wasn’t very deep, but it did manage to make it all the way through itself without a single sacrifice. That’s a bit of a spoiler, but you should know by now that when I review movies here, they contain spoilers.

Paranormal Activity

This was made in 2006 and eventually made its way to Steven Spielberg who, after viewing it, returned his copy in a trash bag declaring it to be haunted and claiming to have had to call a locksmith after he was mysteriously locked in his viewing room while it was running. I think this is one of those stories distributors put about to increase interest in low-budget spooky movies, rather than something that, in reality, actually happened. And I think that’s part of the problem with rational people going to see movies that rely on the viewer’s irrational fears for most of their impact: we see through them and thereby miss out on a lot of the entertainment factor. That’s what happened for me with The Blair Witch Project, with which this film shares many features. Blair Witch, aside from having too many characters and being shot mostly in nauseating Franco-Soviet ShakyCam, had no substance left to it after one stripped away all the irrational nonsense. Paranormal Activity, on the other hand, is better, though still short on much meat for those of us who aren’t captivated by the prospect of demonic possession. For one thing, Paranormal Activity has only two significant characters, so both are much more developed and interesting than the Blair Witch gaggle. Additionally, most of Paranormal Activity was shot from a tripod. There is quite a bit of handheld still, but overall the image is much more controlled and comprehensible.

The best part of Paranormal Activity was the disintegration of the relationship between the two characters. They started in what I think is a fairly typical boyfriend/girlfriend relationship: she is a cute but not beautiful emotionally and financially needy student, and he is a hunkalicious but flaky professional day-trader who works from home. Everything they have– the big house, the expensive TV, the fancy video camera– is his. Her only source of income appears to be making and selling jewelry with a friend. She is wholly dependent on him, which allows him to take advantage of her over the course of the film. He thinks he knows more than she does, but she’s been living with her demon for her whole life. Nevertheless, he refuses to yield to her superior experience. He refuses to listen to her pleas for restraint. He latches on to how “cool” the whole thing is and completely neglects her emotions– something I think he has probably been doing since the beginning of the relationship. Instead he insists that he can control it if she will just let him. This is a man who must control everything and everyone around him– even his day-trading suggests a refusal to allow anyone else to control any part of his life for more than a few hours. Consequently he has a serious problem with letting his girlfriend into his life except in a superficial way. A way that works only until they encounter something beyond his control.

Watching this movie made me think of many couples that I know who fall into this sort of relationship framework, where one partner is emotionally dependent on the other, who uses that dependence for control. It males me wonder if the movie isn’t so much about demonic possession as it is about domestic abuse. So it rates as highly as it does because I believe that there is some richness there underneath the demonic possession schlock.

The Informant!

This movie was interesting, but unremarkable. Melanie Lynskey gave a very nice performance as Ginger Whitacre, and was probably the second most memorable part of the film, despite her limited screen time. The most memorable part of the film was the absolutely gorgeous Nagra SNST. The title sequence is pretty much Nagra porn. I’m definitely looking around on eBay for one of these babies.

Photo by Matt Blaze, 2008.

I did take time out of my absurd schedule to go see Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince at midnight on Wednesday. Which reminds me how irritating it is when I go buy a ticket for “12:00am Tuesday” for a 12:00am Wednesday showing. That people and movie theatres cannot figure out the midnight thing confuses and infuriates me. I know movie theatres count midnight showings as part of the business day preceding, but one would think that in today’s glorious age of fancy computers ticketing and revenue software could be programmed to handle this crap in a more sensible way.

The movie. Hm. Looking for nice things to say...

Well it was very prettily shot, with lots of expressive camerawork. And Tom Felton outdid himself and stole the show with so very few lines.

But they ruined the surprise ending. In the book, it was clear that when Snape made the Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa Malfoy, he had no idea what the Dark Lord had asked Draco to do. The main drama of the book was in wondering about Snape — what he was thinking, whose side he was on, and what he was supposed to be helping Draco do. I can understand stripping out the details of the motives of the Malfoys, the Tom Riddle backstory, or the sinister side of Slughorn, but I cannot see why they castrated the Snape storyline. With all they took out, there’s no real story left.

They got rid of the big battle in Hogwarts at the end. I can see that — there’s another big battle in Hogwarts at the end of Part 7, and the violence and shock of Dumbledore’s death should have been plenty for the climax. But they took that out, too. There was no surprise when Snape killed Dumbledore; neither in the killing nor in the identity of the killer. And not because we’ve all read the book first.

In short, there is no mystery in Harry Potter & the Half-Blood Prince. While the 6th book was not my favorite book, it was still interesting. David Yates & co. actually managed to make this installment bland and uninteresting.

My sister and I went to see wall·e this afternoon.

After the extraordinary success of Ratatouille, I had high expectations for Pixar. Pixar has consistently offered excellent films with lovable characters, engaging stories, and exquisite imagery. When Disney bought out the studio, I was seriously worried that their independence and creativity would suffer — Disney’s in-house animation projects had been famously bad up to that point. Home on the Range and Brother Bear come immediately to mind. I was worried. Ratatouille started production before the acquisition. I believe wall·e is the first Pixar film produced fully under Disney ownership.

When I saw the early wall·e trailers, I became more worried. The trailers disclose a lonely robot cleaning up the mess humans left on Earth. I worried the story would be saturated with oh-so-fashionable environmentalism.

But none of it was to be.

Yes, the Earth is a mess. Yes, it was run by a mega-corporation called “Buy ‘n’ Large.” Yes, the characters spend much of the movie running around after a plant. Yes, the humans are fat and lazy. But it is not an environmentalist movie. It is not an anti-consumerism movie. It is not an anti-technology movie. And it is not an anti-man movie.

Once again, Pixar creates instantly lovable characters, tells an engaging story with a positive message, and does it all with incomparable skill and beauty.

wall·e is, so far as we know, the last surviving member of a swarm of robots built to clean up all the trash that had accumulated on Earth. The humans left for a nice, leisurely, 5-year cruise on a great luxury starship called Axiom (I can’t tell if this is significant — would anyone care to theorize?) while the wall·e robots (built by the ever-present “Buy ‘n’ Large” corporation) stayed behind to manage the trash.

Well it seems there was too much trash, or something happened, and 700 years later, wall·e is the only robot still working, and the trash is still there, and the humans haven’t come back.

In the meantime, wall·e has developed a personality. He has a home where he collects interesting stuff from the trash. He has resilient little cockroach for a friend. He has a favorite movie — Hello, Dolly! — and dreams of putting on his Sunday shoes and dancing with a beautiful woman. Robot. Whatever — it’s endearing.

The Earth is, so far as we are shown at the beginning of the film, anyway, barren of plant-life. The beginning is dominated by reds and yellows and grays, except for glimpses of what used to be a great civilization, where there are faded blues. But no green. No plants in evidence. Until while working one day, wall·e comes across an old refrigerator. He cuts it open and inside discovers a tiny plant, which he takes home to add to his collection.

One day, a ship arrives. A probe ship, which deposits a new robot on Earth — eve. She is a sleek, powerful, advanced machine sent to search the Earth for plant life, as a sign that mankind can finally return. She and wall·e develop a friendship, and wall·e gives eve his most prized possession — the tiny plant. This triggers eve’s primary directive and she shuts down and waits for her ship to take her back to the Axiom. A distressed wall·e tries to wake her, but eventually resigns himself to a merely protective role. When her ship comes, wall·e hitches a ride.

The residents of the Axiom have, over the 700 years they’ve been in space, grown into fat, sedentary, creatures with stubby little legs and unable to move about under their own power. They whiz about the ship on hovering recliners that keep them permanently ensconced in their own little overstimulated electronic bubbles. They never take the time to look around themselves. And the only one who appears to do any work (such as it is) is the practically redundant ship’s captain, who takes a back seat to the robotic autopilot, auto.

Something has gone wrong with mankind, but it isn’t commercialism or individualism or egoism. It’s laziness. Laziness as a result of having around a huge workforce of sustaining robots willing to work for free. Laziness due to complacency — a lack of a desire to advance. Laziness due to a lack of ambition. Laziness, it turns out, enforced by the upper echelon of robots, lead by auto, who are confused (much like hal–9000 was in 2001: A Space Odyssey) by a classified directive issued by a frustrated President in the early days of the cleanup effort.

wall·e and eve work together, without sacrifice, to return the ship to Earth. The useless captain, having learned of human life and culture on Earth from the ship’s computer, cries out, “I don’t want to survive, I want to live!” He lunges from his recliner and takes down auto, allowing the ship to return to Earth. The humans are excited to start building a new home for themselves. And as it turns out, the bleak, barren Earth from the beginning of the film is only a small corner. While the Earth is still a bit of a mess, it is not barren — it is teeming with plant life, ready and waiting to one again serve as a perfect environment for man.

The virtues are hard work, tenacity, and selfish love. The vices are complacency and thoughtless obedience. The universe is a benevolent place full of wonders and opportunity. And at the end, the guy gets to dance with the girl.

wall·e is a delightful film, and completely upholds Pixar’s excellent reputation.

PS: I do have to say that there was one sour note, however. The Peter Gabriel song, “Down to Earth,” trampled on the movie by treating it like the environmentalist paean some people will likely mistake it for. The song played during the closing credits over images of mankind, helped by the robots, rebuilding the Earth into a home. It was awful. You can look up the lyrics yourself if you want, but basically they made it seem like the humans were returning to be stewards for nature, rather than live on Earth. It was disgusting.

Update: Jennifer Snow has an excellent review over at Literatrix.

The sum and substance of my Indy IV experience consisted of me repeatedly chanting at the screen:

Please don’t let it be aliens!
Please don’t let it be aliens!
Please don’t let it be aliens!

Guess what?

It was aliens.

Each of the first three films had a supernatural element–The Ark melted Belloq’s face, the Shankara Stones burned through Indy’s WWII Mark VII British gas mask bag, and the Holy Grail healed Dr. Jones, Sr.‘s gunshot wound. But these were all ambiguous. There was a little bit of magic, but it wasn’t explained. It was almost an afterthought, added to complete the mythical nature of the stories.

Indy IV is entirely unlike the first three in this respect. The Indiana Jones franchise has officially jumped the shark.

And I really have very little else to say about it. There was an absolutely awful scene in a soda shop early on–pure exposition–that felt forced, awkward, and was horribly edited. And Cate Blanchett’s accent kept slipping from Eastern Ukrainian Commie Uber Bitch into Lady Galadriel every time she said “Dr. Jones,” which was quite obnoxious. And don’t forget Mutt’s instantaneous, barely-explained, and preternatural ability to perform very physically demanding tasks with apparent ease: fencing with one foot in one car and the other in another; swinging through the jungle on vines; &c. Now I know Indiana Jones stories aren’t supposed to be very realistic, but this was off the deep end.

In short: the George Lucas Hand of Death strikes again!

Two words spring immediately to mind: formulaic and shallow. Not that there’s anything wrong with being formulaic and shallow — indeed many formulaic and shallow pictures nonetheless rake in the big bucks — but formulas become predictable, and predictability kills immersion unless the characters are interesting enough. Here, they weren’t. They just weren’t developed enough to make me care.

Batman Begins follows much the same formula, but in that film, we had real character depth and conflict. We dig into Bruce Wayne’s motivations. We don’t do that with Tony Stark, so we don’t care about him. The film becomes a vehicle for impressive but vapid special effects and an intolerable string of ham-handed set pieces (accompanied by obnoxious, repetitive, heavy metal riffs) showing them off.

You slavishly follow a formula so you don’t have to think about plot. Use a plot with an established success rate, dress it up in the latest SFX bling, and rake in the dough. It really isn’t art.

It had some good moments. Even some of the set pieces (most of which made it into the trailer, which, having seen the film, I can now say was an absolute masterpiece of editing and marketing) were nice, even if overdone. It managed to keep my attention, if superficially, and didn’t stagnate. My favorite moment has a fake-bald Jeff Bridges yelling at Unnamed Also-Fake-Bald Scientist that Tony Stark was able to built some cool techy thing in a cave with spare bits, and the scientist responding “But I’m not Tony Stark!”

I hated the score because it was overwrought, intrusive, and added nothing to the experience. And Gwyneth Paltrow got royally screwed by the main unit focus puller during the balcony, almost-kiss scene. And there were more continuity issues (e.g., Gwyneth’s shoes mysteriously change while she’s sneaking into Stark’s office at the end of Act IV) than there ought to have been in a film of this budget. They skimped on principal photography almost as much as they skimped on the plot. Just goes to show that having a big post budget for effects can’t make up for shoddy source material.

Anyways, The Cheap Detective was filmed with an aspect ratio of 2.39:1. But it was only ever released on VHS in pan-and-scan, which chops off over 44% of the picture area. The currently-in-production DVD available in the US is also a pan-and-scan copy. The film was only ever released on video in its full width on Laserdisc, in 1995.

Unfortunately for me, I no longer have that roommate. So I no longer have that Laserdisc copy of The Cheap Detective.

Allegedly, Amazon.ca sells a hybrid disc with both a pan-and-scan and a widescreen transfer. I don’t know why this is only sold in Canada. As it stands, the 1995 Laserdisc release is the only complete copy of the film ever published in the US home video market.

I was going to buy the Canadian disc until I found out that the shipping from Canada costs more than the disc itself. I have a birthday coming up here pretty soon, so if anyone is looking for an inexpensive (under $20USD) gift that I would really, really appreciate . . . well, nudge nudge wink wink.