The Martian - Ridley Scott's Pristine World

The Martian

2015 - Ridley Scott

IMAX could be the tell-all issue with me, as my eyes run consistently during a show with the extra goggles on.  People think I'm crying at movies.  Not true, simply dripping from the strain my eyes go through in compensating for the false vision experience.  It's age, or something....too many films, so little time.

I'm going to be rough on this particular film, but make no mistake, I DID enjoy seeing it.  The experience was fun because space and adventure are always a good ride, unless you totally screw it up like "Lost in Space" or something.  Ok wait, I'm feeling apologetic because this is Ridley Scott and I'm about to be critical of a long-time favorite, genius, "must-see" director.  He's in the same list with Scorsese, Kubrick, Eastwood, Malick, Paul Thomas Anderson....you get it.  Ok, he's nothing like Malick, right, but I'm putting him at my own personal same "appreciation" level.

EMOTIONALLY this was a highly effective piece of work, on the level of Apollo 13 in its tension, and at about the same pacing.  Great acting, no doubt on the part of Matt Damon, and some others.  And of course this means great directing, thank you Mr. Scott for another "stellar" job of getting the people right, good reactions, motivations, etc.

Well, there's that.  However, casting needs some help in other departments.  I do understand the need for the NASA lead to be a bit of a mush character, and he needs to be a sort of fall-guy, but it could have been someone else.  I admire Jeff Daniel's screen cool in that he is relaxed, ok, but every time I see him I think Disney.  I'm sorry, it's the truth.  When he's on the cast, there is Disney, and it's a film again.  In other words, he did not help with the supposed realism of the situation, because I don't think of him as the character he's playing, I think of him as an actor.  He's acting.  And that's not what you want in this situation.  However, he was completely offset by Jessica Chastain, and her presence.  Nice. And something of Interstellar was hinted at here, for fans of that film.

Anyway, IMAX could really be an issue in my observation of this film, but I have a feeling it's more an issue of "too well done" as far as the special effects.  It was all so pristine, and crisp, and...well...sterile.  Right, I know there was a great deal of sand, and sweat on the humans, and there was the feces scene and all, mixing up soil and growing potatoes.  Well and good, but even the sand-storm particles were too large and too clean looking, all faky-like.  This was highly "produced" and processed, and for some reason the evenness of the special effects and the cutting edge technology cut off a bit of actual realism for me.  Remember how black and white films would actually conjure for us a dream state of alternate reality and make a world of their own in their atonalism and how removed that was from the world we walk in?  Some of those shots in those older films were done in soft-focus, or with Vaseline on the lens, or not even in very good focus at all .  So when you get effects that are so real, as in The Martian, suddenly they are beyond real, sur-real, and then it can cause us to drop our "suspension of disbelief", and suspect that we're watching a film.  The rotating bolts and nuts in the free-floating hatch scene near the end, well, they were just too clean or something. Hm.

Another element is the story as it unfolds.  I actually don't like to read a new book that a film is based on, if it's a new work.  I'd rather see the film first.  I don't think I'll read this book however.  There was nothing out of keeping in this work with known science, and held true to the 2001 A Space Odyssey tradition of putting the science first ahead of the fiction. Accurate. But the story development was so Hollywood-esque, and unlike Mr. Scott, really.  There was the Jeff Daniels figure with appropriate corporate responses, the typical juggling of priorities at that level of decision making, and as I've said he puts a plastic kind of feel to every scene he's in.  But there was the "secret weapon" figure of the unsung hero from another department which figures it all out. For those of us who know SciFi, that answer was all too obvious, the "turn around and go get him" move.  I did like that character's personal life being so messy, his sleeping in his cubicle.  I did appreciate, like everyone else probably did, the rebellious move by Chastain's character to take a vote and override NASA.

But I also think this work was highly influenced by formulaic insiders and producer interests, and Ridley did not have as much of a hand in it as he would probably like.  I am making a guess here based on nothing except what I already know, but that's my guess.  It does not have the grit and earthiness of Gladiator or Robin Hood.  The terror of Prometheus.  The gnarly unknowedness of the Alien franchise.  It lacked some kind of personality that I can't quite pin down.  And frankly, the film should have ended with Damon's speech to the astronaut class and not gone on with the further footage of the NASA program's future development.  That leads me to my last point.

Together with my previous points, the reason why I think this film feels so corporate, faky, possibly even propagandistic, is that in the end, it was like Space Cheerleading, let's go NASA!  Yeah!  I almost feel like it was funded in part by the space program.  So I guess not leaving with a bit of mystery, or wonder, but instead an upbeat commercially-type of endeavor left me feeling a bit more like Disney than Scott Free.

I went way out of my way to see Blade Runner again at the theater when it was on special run recently in Indianapolis at a Landmark theater.  I will still look forward with great anticipation Ridley's upcoming films, especially what might be a final chapter in the Alien works, but this one did not leave me with a great desire to see it twice, unlike many of his other features which I've seen multiple times over.

Agitatus

The Black Panthers - 2015, Stanley Nelson

The Black Panthers - Vanguard of the Revolution 

2015 - Stanley Nelson

I was just on time for the 8PM show in Chicago on the 26th.  The director, Stanley Nelson, was not going to be on hand for tonight's showing, that was the next night.  Two wonderful black ladies came and sat in a couple of the only seats left right next to me. I was one of only a couple of Anglos in the audience. There were moments of recognition, head nodding all around, chuckles and real laughter at many of the comments of the interviewees. This film had a non-stop type of feel, an urgency, and didn't let up.

The movement of the militarization of inner city black youth in 1967 through 1971, emanating from Oakland CA and quickly catching fire on both coasts and most cities, was short-lived, as could have been predicted by all historical markers, and also could not have come to a good end considering the climate of the times, and the methods employed by its leaders.  The Black Panthers - Vanguard of the Revolution film succinctly, within its 2 hours, gives an accurate timeline of the development of this movement, stunningly real and telling interviews with actual participants and commentators that were involved with it, and overall the best historical overview to date.  It is biased in its viewpoint, as along with every documentary that claims to be a documentary of course must be, but that bias does not really interfere with itself in the telling.  While it is sympathetic bias, yes, it is also real, and self-effacing, and telling all, despite the obvious pain it brings its maker. While there is a sense that this is black "cheerleading" and playing to the dark audience, it cannot be simply dismissed as sentimental reminiscing. This is good filmmaking. 

In example: The truth of the breakfast program’s good was juxtaposed against words later in the film, “just another breakfast program club”, spoken by the critic Eldridge Cleaver from Algeria, but a well-spoken and inside critic that was making a valid point.  The breaking apart of the Panthers, the split, is revealed in just the same stripe as the coming together.  Well-balanced.

What was most revealing to me in this rendition of the Panther story, and a part that had not stood out to me before, was the motivation of J. Edgar Hoover in creating the Cointelpro and the intelligence to infiltrate the Panthers to destroy them.  That motivation was fear.  The same fear that was behind the plantation owner’s eyes when he saw the slave quarters going up in flames with unshackled black bodies dancing all around it in the night was the same look behind the eyes of the administration in the creation of the program to douse those flames being born in Oakland.  And not without reason.  Black men with guns, in the open, loaded, and even marching into the State house with those same weapons.

But at this critical juncture, there could have been another way, another approach, other than subterfuge, other than the “war-like” tactic of counterintelligence, surveillance, undermining, oppressive police tactics, outright lies and deceiving of the public.  

The Panthers had a righteous cause, and rightly supported, and it was the failure of the administration and others in a position to provide adequate rhetorical and active response, and activation of law to bring about peace, that was the cause of the disruptive actions that ensued in the first place.  However, it must be also noted that the Panthers did not help their own cause in many ways, aligning themselves with the Vietnamese north, the concurrently hated and feared enemy of an ongoing war.  This alignment is what piqued the interest of the national government power more than anything, to believe that an internal organization was possibly providing sanctuary and assistance to a foreign power that was seen as a direct threat and an enemy of the state, and outspokenly communist.  The Panthers adopted the language of communism, Mao’s little red book, and violent communism, “by any means necessary”, and this was in equivalent terms rhetorically and realistically a physically active threat against the constitutional government. That’s why the gloves came off.

IF…and this is a big if that I draw from the subject….if the language of the movement had stayed closer to home and dealt with the most pressing and true problem of domestic violence and oppression of black people by the police, and other authoritative figures of power, and had combined their efforts earlier with WASP sensitivities, and while blandishing weapons also sought a political solution, the whole picture might have looked very different.  It also might have looked differently if concurrently the white-led governmental system would not have resorted to fear and intimidation, and ruinous underhanded spying, the FBI being the weapon of choice.

If if if…….IF Huey had not done drugs….IF MLK had not been assassinated, IF we would only listen….IF….as Rodney King has said, “Why can’t we all just get along?”

The Visit - 2015 - Movie - M. Night Shyamalan

The Visit

PG-13   94 Min   Comedy, Horror   
Sept. 11th, 2015 (USA)

So, there may be some reason why this film was released on Sept 11th.  It has a definitive moral: don't let hate drive what you do.

Disappointment can lead to disillusionment.  The teen filmmaker, as documentarian (and please note that documentary filmmakers are primarily concerned with recording reality so that it does not get lost but for exposition of the facts into the future) is throwing around complex film terminology, attempting to be grown past her age, and to create from technology a remembrance of her mother's childhood.  She is exposed to her mother's childhood world, the town, the school, the grandparents......well all seems well anyway.  Is that Martha Stuart in her old age?  The farmhouse seems like mid-century preservation or a museum of nostalgia.

M. Night is at his best when hiding the lurking evil underneath a veil of normalcy.  It's akin to the offscreen horror of Alien, except in this case, the off-screen is actually right on the screen, you just can't see it.

Night has taken some heat of late from many critics, and I for one am a bit more disappointed in his later offerings.  You're only as good as you latest film as they say in Hollywood, however, it does look a bit distant from the man who gave us The 6th Sense, Signs, The Village, and Unbreakable.  That streak of films, along with Lady in the Water, marked a new kind of filmmaker and set M. Night Shyamalan apart from some of his peers.  But there was some juvenility and somewhat of an industry-burdened sigh from the films Devil, The Happening, and this one.  There seems to be some pressure here to use cutesy actors like the teens, and slightly more than convenient plot setups to get to our sit-suspense little treat.  Just as the kids were set into a trap, I the viewer also felt like I was set up for a "boo-gotcha", as when the grandmother suddenly looks into the lens at night.  It's fine to have your kidney-jolting moments like that, but it's also expected to some degree.  Nothing surprised me here except (spoiler spoiler spoiler....sorry not gonna tell).

So this was "fun". It's funny that IMDB listed this as "Comedy, Horror".  Hm, there were some genuinely funny parts, now that I think about it.

Is it worth going out and seeing at the theater?  Well, no, this is a rental I'm afraid.  I'm sorry M!  Sincerely I do love your films, but this is not Shutter Island by Scorsese.  You'll have to take it up a notch to get there.

6 out of 10 stars/points/beans/Depends pads/whatever

Agitatus

Art

So why have I not been writing so many articles as I did in 2013?  What happened to my proliferation of media verbiage?

I've been making my own media:
https://vimeo.com/user4616063

And working on my art:
www.steven-m-curtis.com

Hope you visit my sites.

Best of Enemies film

Best of Enemies2015

R 87 min.
Media Ranch - Motto Pictures - Tremolo Productions

All things 1968 interest me.  It's the year the world split in 2 and we received as it's twin child the birth of 2 cultures, and the answers are still being questioned even now.  In fact, they are working themselves out.... even now, hence my novel that I've been working on for 10 years.  Right, a novel, me.... well, about the film....

Best of Enemies is the recap of the 1968 spectacle that ABC launched in an effort to save its dying influence in the media against the only other 2 players, NBC and CBS who were in bed with the political parties to the teeth, and broadcast a perceived iconoclast of personalities in William F. Buckley Jr. Vs. Gore Vidal.  It was naughty vs. virtuous (you were expecting nice, no, not in this review), basically a new conservative, right wing power vs. the newly empowered left-winged liberal (not libertarian, please don't get those confused) social and political anti-establishment humanism.

The film covers the mood of the period well, with cuts to the surrounding circuses of both National Conventions, in Miami and in Chicago, drawing well on the contrasts in locations, and being honest about the eccentricities of both, capturing the personalities of both parties evenly it seems.  The narration of several key side-commentators of notable interest was spot-on in many cases, such as the observation that the left's characterization of the conservative movement was attempting to draw similarities to that of fascist Nazism in order to demonize it, and create a great wave of negative public opinion against it.  During the debates this is what the "cherry bomb" was referring to, the nasty underpinning that many would not say, but believed.  When it came out in the debates, it was clear that this was the issue that was both a false positive, and yet presciently real, and also.... what made Buckley buckle, and lose his otherwise detached mannerly argumentations.

I felt that here however, is where content was underplayed over the context of that emotional moment, because the film consistently returned to it, time and again, as if it were that moment of defeat for WFB that drove his life ever after, and the issues be damned, that's what he spent the rest of his life dousing the flames of, a sort of dominant defeat that was never recovered.  I disagree.  This is the central focus of the last part of the story that the film portrays that I would have to say ignores the vast evidence to the contrary, that Buckley's life was filled not with vitriol over a single enemy as much as he in fact turned that moment of regret into fuel that powered his ongoing positional rhetoric against the cultural upheaval of idealists into his dying days.  The moment of weakness that seemed to look so ugly for Buckley on the Charlie Rose show sample that was included in the film, and was in fact a moment of personal resignation was paired with the "non-admission" of his regret over that debate moment with Vidal, to make it seem as if that were the driving force of his life, and that the moment of defeat were in fact the "end" of his debate...in effect, he had lost the debate.

This is filmmaking ladies and gentlemen.  The power of the media proves itself once again to be almost indecipherable from the truth, and the power of persuasion still rests with those who wield it, be it ever so benign, or malevolent.  Documentary?  There is no such thing.  The moment you point the camera in any direction, if automatically leaves out at least 2/3 of the whole view.

As much as all things 1968 interest me, and as much as I relate to the content of this film, knowing most of the principle players and parts they have to play, the timeline that I have memorized, from April to Oct (that's from the death of MLK to the raising of the fists at the Olympics), this film did not overwhelm me.  I was delighted at the revelations of the tete a tete between the protagonists, the bantering of the debates themselves, but at the same time was left wanting for more.  It's strange how the film spent so very little time on the actual debates themselves and relied on commentators and narration.  I am particularly biased in this way however, in that if it were me personally, I would have just opened with a few explanatory titles, and then rolled the debates themselves, in entirety.  But of course, out of context, most filmgoers now would not be in the least bit impressed with that, as the knowledge of the 60s wanes, a full 1.3 generations separation between it and the present.

To many of the current generation this film will seem irrelevant, or there may be some separation of the content from the modern context.  A 20-something may regard this film as nostalgic, and completely miss the cultural relevancy of the content of those debates, as passé, as historical, as something to be learned from, but not worried over.  That is, of course, a mistake.  The debates are still raging all around us.  These men are both dead, but the divide they represented still exists as surely as the Mason-Dixon line, and as surely as the Panama Canal, or the poles where one has Polar Bears, and the other has Penguins.  Such debates are still ensuing, and now are in our courts, our schools, and our religious culture, sending one part one way, and one another.  Most recently the debate was resurfaced in the media moment of Ben Stein's "Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed", and David Horowitz's book "ProFessors: the 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America".  These were not created in 1968, but in the last 10 years.

I highly recommend this film for those interested in the subject of the 60s, if you're not schooled in it widely, or if this is of some interest to you, but be forewarned, it is not comprehensive, and I believe gives a...well, biased view of the circumstances under which it's "documentary" feel leads us to believe that it is undivided, unmodified, and consummate truth.  For it's length of course, it is attempting to explore an important moment in history and expose for examination 2 important figures of that moment, and you can't cram all of that surrounding history into 87 minutes, let alone 2.5 hours, so this film ends up being targeted to those of us who already know the context, to some degree as to have it make sense. Please read and watch more widely than this narrow 87 minutes allows.

Agitatus

Housekeeping - 1980 - Marilynne Robinson - Novel

Housekeeping 

(novel)1980

Marilynne Robinson

I didn't discover Frederick Buechner or Flannery O'Connor until I was in my 30s, so I guess I should not be surprised by my record that I did not discover Marilynne Robinson until 2 years ago, and even more not shocked that I hadn't read her first novel until just this week.  It was published in 1980.  Where was I exactly?

Incredible.  Here is my favorite line from the book after my first read, as I'm sure I'll read this again, and possibly again after that, for it's densely populated word-smithing I'm sure that I have quite skipped over some gems and did not read it slow enough this time.  But on pg. 179 of the paperback,

"The sorrow is that every soul is put out of house."

There it is.  That's the book in as few words as possible.  And the belief that interlaces every page, like a ghost behind the paragraphs, always there.  The prose is multilayered, but after this read, I've also picked up on Robinson's style.  And that is summed up later in the book within the context of the story actually, when Ruthie talks about "facts", as she exclaims in the narrative voice that, "Facts don't explain things....it's Facts that need an explanation".  

That is, in fact, what Marilynne does.  Her work is character driven, not plot heavy at all.  Yes, there certainly is one, and at times because of the absence of heavy plotting we are absolutely groaning to find out "what happens".  She does allow this, eventually, but there is the weaving in and out of present tense reality to that of peeling back the layers of that reality to reveal divine undergirding, and  concomitantly the barrenness of the human condition.  ..."every soul is put out of house" is the point of reference upon which the entire ship floats, and this holds true for all of her work, especially that of the trilogy Gilead, Home, and Lila, all of those gems that I have read prior to this early work.  Now I see the germination of those novels back this far ago, the seeds of Lila, the son of Boughton drifting,  the images throughout of children bereft of parents or held back from life by forces beyond them.  

Great stuff.  A must read, even if you have taken this long to get around to it as I have.

Agitatus   

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl - 2015 - Movie

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl 2015

PG-13  105min  Comedy-Drama  June 2015 (USA)

Funny Funny Sad. Mostly funny.  Powerfully realized as a screenplay and film. I took my 19yo daughter to this and we were both surprised, and elated.  At one point she had to calm me down a bit because I got over-giggled at the snippet of the mockery of Urban Cowboy.  That's ok though, there were some other adults in the crowd that were also laughing with me, and I understand why my girl could not get some of the particular points of reference that the film spoof titles were making because I'm sure she hasn't seen all of them.

Acting was not a main point here, it was narration and the follow-through invisibility of the camera, the pacing, and the way that the punchy lines were delivered throughout that made it all work.  Although the acting was excellent in itself, the editing has it in this film.  It's really a piece of magic.  David Trachtenberg is the cutter, and this is one case where it has paid to grab a TV-oriented editor and bring him over to the world of the feature.  Great stuff.  Fast, precise editing makes this story move, where it could have dragged in other hands.  And starting out with the narrator, being the principle player Greg, played by Thomas Mann, giving his voice and character both a calmly even tone was a great decision in the directing department, via Alfonso Gomez-Rejon.  Earl, well, he was so natural, a great foil in the structure, not an Abbot and Costello thing at all, but a very necessary partner and alter-ego to Greg.  The book of course plays on this much more, the relationship being one of kinship across racial lines, planting Greg firmly in the "I'm taking this as it is" department, whose first and foremost mission is to remain anonymous in life, or non-committed and universally ignored.  They played well together, especially when in conflict.

Olivia Cooke plays Rachel, the dying girl.  I would call her role absolutely real, and normal.  A teen girl, ill with cancer.  Her acting responses were so well done, bravo, just the way you would expect a real teen to act and to feel.  There was not a moment where I felt she was acting.  Superb.

This story is huge delight, and if you're a film buff, even more so for the comic insides that weave in between.  I have to post a separate picture here I found of just a "few" of the many titles that the young filmmakers were producing.  Gut funny.  What I want to know is, where is the entire list of their films?  There were so many!

8.5 is the correct number for this film.  IMDB said 8.3.  So what's .2 eh?

-Agitatus

Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Vinterberg - 2015

Far From the Madding Crowd 2015

PG-13  119min  Drama  May 2015 (USA)

A most wonderful escape into Victorian England, and a film you can take your spouse to safely without fearing being hit over the head by some agenda other than romance.  There is tragedy, conflict, and the essence of commitments.  Wonderfully played by all, albeit Tom Sturridge who plays the brazen and bold Sergeant is a bit too brazen and bold at times, and miraculously reappears at the appropriate moment....well, I will not give too much away here, but there were some farther-fetched plot points, yet we are all too eager to receive because of their inevitability.  Yes, it's all too obvious even from the start what is going to happen, but dang it all, that's the fun of the story, watching it unfold exactly as we would have it to be.  HOW it unfolds, the drama, is indeed wonderfully portrayed.  Have I used that word wonderful too many times yet?  There was one thing that happens near the end that was not foreseeable, although my wife says she saw it coming.  Hm.

The most fetching (ha, you thought I'd say wonderful) thing for me, the film guy, was the cinematography.  Quite frankly, that's the main reason I wanted to see it.  I knew it would be beautiful, and it delivers.  Painterly, moving, thick with mist and clarity where appropriate, the lens was polished on this one.   Charlotte Bruus Christensen, the Cinematographer is from Denmark.  Every scene was a thrill.  But there was one special moment, and I am prejudiced because I am a man, and I already love Carrie Mulligan, especially her work in The Great Gatsby aside L. DiCaprio and Inside Llewyn Davis...but the moment was one where the camera catches her seated on a sofa with the window light coming in, and....well, it was Vermeer and...other artists come to mind.  Perfect.  I'm sure that my lovely wife could also have pointed out a few scenes where the handsomeness of the 3 men were portrayed in the same manner.  Striking.

9 out of 10 I think.  Excellent.

In Abstentia, Duay Brothers - 2000

In Abstentia - 2000

B&W film.  Introspective POV in extremis.

This is Eraserhead + Vodka + Acid.

Basically this: A woman in an insane asylum writes to her husband.  There you go.

-Agitatus
07/16/15