Movies

Hanging with the Spokesbear: Avatar

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Spokesbear: You awake?

Peter: No.

Spokesbear: You sure.

Peter: Very.

Spokesbear: And you’re paying utterly no attention to what I’m saying, right?

Peter: None. Fuck off.

Spokesbear: No need to be hostile. I just wanted to make sure you were docile before I told you this.

Peter: *sleeps*

Spokesbear: James Cameron’s said he’s going to make nothing but Avatar films until he dies. Apparently everything he wants to do, he thinks he can do inside that universe.

Peter: *keeps sleeping*

Spokesbear: Seriously, dude. James Cameron. Avatar.

Peter: I heard you.

Spokesbear: But you’re not ranting.

Peter: No.

Spokesbear: Come on.

Peter: No. I’ve made my peace with Avatar, and the fact that there will be an Avatar 2, and that it will likely keep going, ad infinitum, until James Cameron finally passes from this world and into whatever fucked up version of heaven he’s imagining.

Spokesbear: But people have been sending you links. They want to see a response.

Peter: They want to see me rant, it’s not quite the same thing.

Spokesbear: I want to see you rant.

Peter: Seriously, dude, I’m not your performing monkey.

Spokesbear: …

Peter: Okay, fine, I am your performing monkey, but I’m still not doing it. I vented my rage a few years back. I’ve already revisited it. I don’t need to revisit it now.

Spokesbear: You’re no fun anymore.

Peter: Sure I am. I’ll rant about plenty of things in the future, it’s just… Look, just agree or disagree with this statement – Avatar 1 was a fucking pile of shit.

Spokesbear: Agreed.

Peter: Then what more needs be said?

Spokesbear: Something that will convince all the people who liked it that they’re wrong?

Peter: Ha.

Spokesbear: That amuses you?

Peter: There’s a whole damn internet full of people trying to convince people that the Avatar films are wrong. I know, because I made one or two posts about it and there’s already a disproportionate amount of web-traffic that finds there way here by Googling the words Why Avatar Sucks.

Spokesbear: And you don’t want to inform them?

Peter: I don’t want to encourage them. About the only thing that depresses me more than Avatar traffic is the sheer number of people who find their way here googling shit about the Big Bang Theory. I mean, I made one post decrying the damn show, and then…

Spokesbear: Right. Shit. I see your point.

Peter: Thank you.

Spokesbear: …

Peter: …

Spokesbear: …

Peter: …

Spokesbear: You realise this post won’t help with either of those things, right?

Peter: Dammit.

Spokesbear: Just sayin’.

Peter: I was better off staying asleep.

Ticking Things Off the To-Do List

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I’m having something of a catch-up evening this evening. One of those nights where long un-answered email is finally responded to and long ignored tasks finally get ticked off the to-do list. On tonight’s list: book flights to Melbourne in two weeks; write up an invoice or two that needs to get mailed out; write a blog post. Two of three are done, and once I click post I get to parade around the house in triumph, confident in the fact that I have rocked the kasbah.

Sadly, the presence of my flatmate means I’m no longer being literal when I say that.

Still to do: respond to unanswered email; line up places to stay while in Melbourne; crit things; write things that are not blog posts. It’s a busy, ramshackle kind of evening, but it’s been a ramshackle kind of month thus far, so all things considered that makes a kind of sense.

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I watched Midnight in Paris yesterday.

Only, that isn’t really the best way to start.

Lets try this: I run very hot and cold on Woody Allen films, but the ones I tend to enjoy the most are the ones where he plays with genre, particularly genres with a very distinct sense of time. Purple Rose of Cairo, for example, or The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. They aren’t perfect films, not by a long shot, but for all his faults Allen seems to have a knack for evoking a sense of nostalgia and deconstructing it a little.

Midnight in Paris isn’t like the previous two films I’ve mentioned, but it shares a kind of subtext with them and showcases all the things I like in Woody Allen films. It is, after all, a film that’s entirely about nostalgia and why we feel it and how it shapes us. It’s also a film about leaving that sense of nostalgia behind, although I’m not sure this part of it works, if only ’cause it’s so overt. The acting is solid through, the digressive dialogue works better here than it usually does in other Allen films, and some of the casting is brilliant: Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein. Corey Stoll as Hemmingway. I would forgive this movie almost anything for those two casting choices alone

It’s not a perfect film, but it’s the Woody Allen film I’ve liked most from the last couple of years, and I expect it’ll be a film I’ll rewatch simply based on the premise and the theme.

It was also a remarkably apropos film to watch at this point. For various reasons, not least of which is the fact that I turn thirty-five next week, I’ve been waxing nostalgic quite a bit of late and it’s nice to have a reminder that maybe I should just stop and get on with things.

 

 

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

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Let me put this out there from the beginning: I’m a totally fucking cranky cinema goer. I find it very hard to discuss films, even films I like, without veering into the territory of ranting. It’s not that I dislike film – quite the contrary – but the result is this kind of terminal disappointment as I encounter film and after film that just doesn’t quite excite me. It gets me into considerable trouble when I discuss films with people at work, because it frequently looks as though I dislike everything, when really I’m just perpetually disapointed by films that take no chances or lack a visual aesthetic or even, god help me, decide to go 3D.

Also, I’m not a huge fan of realism. The more a film tries to simulate reality, the less interested I am. I will watch  some utter dreck and adore it simply because it’s trying to do something interesting, even when the story fills me with towering rage (Speed Racer, I’m looking at you).

Which is all a means of putting things into context when I say this: I went to see Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy with my dad on Sunday and, honestly, wow. It’s one of those films that reminds me why I actually like the medium of film, which seems to be a rarity in this day and age of 3D digital effects. I have loved exactly three films in the last five years, in the sense that I walked out of them thinking wow, that was fucking awesome, which means TTSS joins the ranks of Bright Star and Scott Pilgrim Versus the World as reasons the human race should be permitted to keep on existing after allowing fucking Avatar to become one of the highest grossing movies of all time.

My favourite part of TTSS is the way it finds the cinematic way of mimicking LeCarre’s writing – it’s a sparse film that plays its cards very close to the chest in terms of narrative, letting all the meaning come through in carefully constructed shots and subtext. And it’s honest-to-god subtext, not the usual cinematic approach in which you are BEATEN OVER THE HEAD WITH A MIGHTY FUCKING SUBTEXT STICK in order to make sure you get it.

Go see this film. Give the film makers lots and lots of money. They totally deserve it.