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Actual new stuff

07.26.05 @ 12:54PM Tags

On the sidebar to the left, I have posted some new stuff. Because they are “pages” and not “posts,” they do not show up in this main space. I have not gotten comments to work on them yet, mainly because I have no idea what I’m doing.

Actual Movies is a movie ratings system I created after seeing many, many bad films. The list covers films that either a) came out recently or b) are coming soon–to theaters, DVD, or the Pacifying Device. It will be periodically updated, as I see more bad movies.

Actual Movies, Explained is the logic, or lack thereof, behind this ratings system. Here is an excerpt:

I have left the theater so many times with the feeling that I just witnessed an amalgamation of arbitrary formula, marketing strategies, committee-based decision-making, and opportunistic career-building–with nary a singular, creative vision to be found among it all–that it could not even technically be called a film. This garbage I just sat through could not possibly be considered a movie in the same vein as a film that actually tries to express something genuine, could it? No. Thus it is Not Actually a Movie.

New Lows is a page about making it as an artist, but not by being good at what you do; rather the opposite. It also cites specific examples, if you like the kind of words that would get you in trouble in grade school.

New Lows separate themselves from the average and below-average by either being so bad they’re good, or by being so bad that they deserve their own category of bad. If you can manage to successfully lower the bar in this respect, you have achieved New Lows.

Other pages, like, oh, say, the explanation behind this site, are still not posted. Basically I’ve avoided the most important thing by getting the less important things done–I just cleaned up my room because I had homework to do, essentially. The good thing about "No" Film School, though? No homework. The bad thing? The tuition is outrageous.

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Actual Movies, explained

07.23.05 @ 8:06PM Tags

What is the Actual Movie rating? Isn’t a movie just defined as a “moving picture,” wherein still pictures are presented in rapid succession to create the illusion of motion, and therefore don’t all films qualify as “actual” movies?
Well, yes and no. Your grandmother could project slides from her last Key West vacation on a wall for two hours and that would “technically” be a movie. But we’re not talking about technicalities here. We’re talking about a complex set of criteria (too complex to be adequately defined here), and a vast but gradual change in the very fabric of our society.

THE VERY FABRIC OF OUR SOCIETY

Long ago, I’m told there were times of peace, free love, and a national sense of hope. For evidence of this I look to the vibrant styles of the time: primary colors, sideburns, flared pants, and thickly-framed eyeglasses. Now we wear a lot of black and gray, we have productized-hair, chino or khaki pants (what’s the difference?), and frameless specs. The most “hopeful” thing we don today is a pair of pre-fucked-up jeans. Even the visual motif of Saturday Night Live’s intro, which used to be a lively parade of moving, colored lines, is now a manhole. Things are not hopeful. Our youth is jaded.

These days you often hear the word “actually” used as a qualifier. “(Blank) was actually pretty good,” one commonly says; the “actually” is used to indicate that the experience was better than expected. But the widespread adoption of the term is essentially a defeatist acknowledgement of the general crappiness of all things. It is also indicative of our lowered expectations, which apply to everything: a newly-released movie, the latest song on the radio, a heavily-marketed beverage. “How was the concert?” “Good, the band actually sounded pretty good live.” “How is that magazine?” “It’s actually pretty informative, for a teen gossip rag.” “How was your colonoscopy?” “It was actually a lot of fun.”

The “actual” in the Actual Movie verdict is not meant to refer to whether or not it is “actually” any “good,” however. No, it’s even worse than that. Here at No Film School, movies are not given a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down,” or something as objectively precise as four-and-a-half stars. No, the criteria used here is to simply ask the question, “was it actually a movie?”

By this, I mean the following: I have left the theater so many times with the feeling that I just witnessed an amalgamation of arbitrary formula, committee-based decision-making, marketing strategies, and opportunistic career-building–with nary a singular, creative vision to be found among it all–that it could not even technically be called a film. This garbage I just sat through could not possibly be considered a movie in the same vein as a film that actually tries to express something genuine, could it? No. Thus it is Not Actually a Movie.

THE INDUSTRY

More often than not, movies get their start these days not from a good script or a fully-formed idea, but from a bought property with a star and/or director “attached.” Oftentimes that’s all it is–a 25-words-or-less high concept that some major studio has backed–that “just” needs a writer (or twelve) to “bang out” the script. Actually, even more often these days it is a property with a pre-built audience, like a book. Either way the studio figures with the right amount of star power, marketing, explosions, and exposed breasts, the project will make money; therefore it’s worth doing. NOT because it’s something new, or because it expresses anything genuine. NOT because it calls attention to something that needs changing in our society, or because it helps us understand ourselves, our history, or our dog. NOT because it’s a remake of a project that made money in the past. Wait; YES because of that. Basically: most of the time, movies get greenlit for all the wrong reasons, or really, THE wrong reason: “It’s all about the Benjamins,” Puff/P./Daddy/Diddy once postulated. (The movie of the same name, starring Ice Cube, had to be re-titled for international markets, to “All About the Money.” Just so we’re clear).

When your primary reason for making art is commerce, you’re going to end up making projects that foolishly ask the question, What’s the Worst That Could Happen? Besides forcing critics to get creative to come up with a poster quote, the worst kind of Not-Actually-Movies are pandering, and are often insulting to the intelligence of anyone who has any. Too many of these pandering releases over the years and, voilà–you have an exponential rise in the use of the qualifier “actually.” Thus the Actual Movie verdict is a monster of the studios’ own creation; if they didn’t repeatedly fund useless projects and advertise the hell out of them and release them even though they know they suck–then we wouldn’t actually have this problem.

Obviously the movie industry is not the only offender here; rather it is the marketing departments of many different industries that contribute to this. Overuse of the word “actually” is a response to the prevalence of hype in our culture today, where the trailers, TV spots, and quotes from critics all hail the film in question as a terrific achievement. If every other film is advertised as the film of the year and a “must-see,” then eventually audiences get desensitized to the hype. If there was no marketing there would be no need for people to use “actually” so much, because there would be no inflated expectations as a rule. But these days the marketing department is much larger than the creative one. Consent has to be manufactured, after all. And therefore I evaluate movies based on their motivation; is the director trying to express something, or is he or she only taking this job to build a career? Was this movie made because it offers audiences something they haven’t seen before, or was it greenlighted because the numbers added up?

So that’s what the Actual Movie verdict is: when significantly reduced expectations meet disaffected youth, you have a drastically-lowered bar. Is it an Actual Movie? At the heart of this evaluation are some important questions:

CRITERIA

The Actual Movie verdict is based on a snap judgment rather than a scientific calculation based on previously made statements or forthcoming criteria. This is important, because snap judgments evaluate many things that wouldn’t typically make a pros-and-cons list, e.g., how attractive your date was the night you saw the film–which can significantly affect your overall impression of the movie in question. Saying that it’s a snap judgment is also my escape clause.

Questions asked of an Actual Movie:

1) Does the film try to reinvent movies? If not, does the film contribute something to the advancement of the art form, preferably something new, or at least something not seen in the last few years?

2) If the film is not overtly trying to reinvent cinema, then it must be trying to succeed on established terms. Does the film effectively incorporate some of the lessons learned in storytelling over the past few thousands of years of human civilization, ever since stories were told by loin-clothed Cro-Magnons around a leaping fire? Actually, Cro-Magnons would have been more than a “few” thousands of years ago. So forget the leaping fire and substitute the Globe Theatre: since Shakespeare first honed what would later be called “Da Art of Storytellin” by Outkast, have the filmmakers in question learned something of the art of Drama and/or Comedy, and applied it to their picture?

3) At some point in its running time, does the movie observe something about our overall human predicament?

4) Was a genuine emotion, feeling, or sentiment expressed at some point in the film?

5) Does the film have staying power, i.e., does it resonate with you a few days, weeks, months, or even years later?

6) Essentially, much of this boils down to this: is the film significant? Will it stand out from the crowd, or, with time, will it simply slip into a morass of endless me-toos?

Things the film must avoid to be an Actual Movie:

1) The driving force behind the movie must not be the marketing department. Yes, maybe the project was funded because an executive thought it would make money–this is the real world, after all–but the creative force behind the movie must not be primarily interested in the finances.

2) Similarly, entire scenes were not written into the film in order to “fill the quadrant,” i.e., appeal to a certain demographic. For example:

Executive: Let’s have this chase sequence take place on skateboards. That will give us some scenes for the trailer that the teens will like.

Writer: But the film takes place on the frontier! In 1803!

Executive: Horse-drawn skateboards, then.

3) Most importantly, formula was not simply used for formula’s sake, i.e., “shit, we’re on page 90, we need a climax–blow something up!” (see: summer movies, 1982-2005), or for lack of imagination (see: Dreamworks Animation).

4) The movie does not star Colin Farrell.

DISCLAIMERS, CAVEATS, ETC.

1) The good thing about not being a real movie reviewer and having no publication or standards to hold myself to is that I can blatantly violate my own rules. For example, you could have a film starring Colin Farrell, in which he brilliantly plays Hitler as a child (yes, not only does he play Der Fϋhrer, but he portrays him at the age of six) and it could turn out to be an Actual Movie despite the “no Colin Farrell” rule. A real-world example of this is 1998′s Out of Sight, which starred J. Lo, albeit in her “Jennifer Lopez” days. J. Lo certainly qualifies as an inferior female version of Colin Farrell–at least he does accents–but Out of Sight was an Actual Movie, despite (probably not because of) her presence. Note that I may have to substitute another actor in Colin Farrell’s place if the upcoming The New World (November 2005) turns out to be an Actual Movie.

2) Trying for greatness and not succeeding fully will be rewarded; successfully pulling off mediocrity will not. 1998′s The Thin Red Linewas heavily edited by Fox against Terrence Malick’s wishes, and as such may not have succeeded in the manner he intended. Yet it was an Actual Movie through and through, not only for what it was, but for what it strove to be.

3) Films which are deemed Not Actual Movies may still be very enjoyable, or even have considerable merits. But do they have staying power? Snap judgment!

4) The Pseudo-Actual Movie category had to be added because several films on each list inevitably fell under the same footnote: that they walked the line, at times being an Actual Movie and at times not. Note that this is different than the film that “jumps” the line; these films get put in multiple categories, if they cleanly divide (one of which could be the Pseudo category). Think of the Pseudo-Actual Movie category as the equivalent of the two-critic compromise, where one critic gives the film a thumbs-up and the other a thumbs-down. Years ago, this would have been very confusing for gladiators.

5) The “Actual” method of evaluation could also be applied to music criticism, in the form of Actual Albums. In fact you could apply this to many things… But that is an Actual Bad Idea. Unless I end up doing it.

So, with all of that in mind, here is the current list of Actual Movies.

EDIT: this was moved to be a “post” instead of a “page,” because of my general abandonment of this ratings system. Thus the “current” part of the above link is an outright lie.

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Batman Begins and Sin City are the best comic book movies of all time. Can we stop making comic book movies now? Also, a lengthy rant on Hollywood's New Lows

07.7.05 @ 11:50AM Tags

If almost every movie nowadays is based on an existing property of some sort–and if this particular summer is any indication, Hollywood is trying to eliminate the “original screenplay” awards category by March–then it should come as no surprise to see even the good directors hopping on the gravy train. After all, filmmakers gotta eat too, and doing something that’s been done before is better than doing nothing at all, I suppose. A consequence of this new influx of talent, though, is that some of these remakes are actually turning out to be much better than they deserve to be. Key word: “some.”

First let’s rehash this season’s rehashes. Summer of 2005 is, I believe, the least original summer of all time. With pitifully few exceptions, the majority of major releases this season are derived from existing properties, including comic books (Fantastic Four, Sin City, Batman Begins), old television shows (Dukes of Hazzard, Bewitched, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (sort of)), sequels (Star Wars 3, Land of the Dead, Deuce Bigelow: European Gigolo), regular old books without pictures in them (War of the Worlds, The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants), and, finally, the least-justifiable of all, the remake (The Honeymooners, Herbie: Fully Loaded, The Longest Yard). We even have some multiple-award winners here: Batman Begins is both a sequel AND a comic book movie, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is both a book AND a remake, War of the Worlds has already been a book, a movie, AND a radio show, and Lords of Dogtown breaks new ground by being the dramatized version of a documentary. Does this last film open with the title “Based on a True Story,” or does it say, “Based on the Documentary You Saw on Cable, Like, Last Month”? In an ideal world–no, not even in an ideal world, just a slightly more proactive and intelligent one–it would have been the producer’s job to discover the story of the invention of skateboarding on his or her own, and recognize it as a compelling story worth telling in feature film form. Well in the case of Lords of Dogtown apparently the producer was proactive enough to GO SEE Dogtown and Z-Boys (maybe even in the theater!) and afterwards, on his or her own accord, thought, “gee, that would make a good movie.” Jackass, it ALREADY WAS.

Is this the downside of the newfound popularity of documentaries–that we have to be saddled with “The Hollywood Version”? Dogtown and Z-Boys came out in 2001 and Lords of Dogtown (note the subtle title change) was released in 2005. Spellbound came out in 2001, and now 2005 will see the release of Akeelah and the Bee (which narrows the focus of Spellbound down to only one of its characters: the inner-city slam-speller, who is of course more interesting than the oh-so-typical hardworking Indian prodigy). Apparently the timeframe for remaking a true movie into a fake one is 3-4 years; I figure this means we can expect the fictionalized version of Super Size Me to hit theaters in the summer of 2007, starring Johnny Knoxville. Actually, you know what? New Lows will be reached here–they won’t have someone “play” Morgan Spurlock, they’ll just get Morgan Spurlock–that is the kind of active imaginations we’re dealing with. Because Spurlock will be acting this time, he’ll eat veggie burgers disguised as Big Macs, and they’ll slap on progressively fatter fat suits as shooting progresses. But wouldn’t faking Super Size Me sort of defeat the whole point of…? Anyway, this new kind of meta-lowness has already been achieved in Lords of Dogtown. In another stunning example of thinking outside the box, the producers hired Dogtown and Z-Boys’ writer and director, skateboarding pioneer Stacy Peralta, as the screenwriter for Lords of Dogtown (but not as its director–note to Stacy: do not leave intentional mistakes in the final cut anymore, the suits don’t get it).

So what else is there to “draw inspiration” from? Hollywood has already turned to every other existing property for ideas, including its most recent gold mine (if you can call it that–“lead mine” would be more appropriate): the video game (Wing Commander, Tomb Raider, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Super Mario Bros.). Walt Disney reversed the usual order and based 2003′s Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl on its 1967 theme park ride. 2001 saw the release of the movie Me and Mrs. Jones, which was inspired by the 70’s infidelity anthem of the same name. In the same soul-sucking (hah, hah) vein, Martin Lawrence’s 1996 film A Thin Line Between Love and Hate stole its title from The Persuaders’ 1971 chart-topper–and the group H-town (of esteemed “Knockin’ Da Boots” fame) re-recorded it, quite sacrilegiously, for the soundtrack. So after you’ve based feature films on 4-minute songs, what’s next? Movies based on 30-second ad spots? How about Got Milk?, in which aliens invade earth (again), except this time for our dairy supply? Gatorade’s Is it in you, the movie? Actually that sounds like a porn. Well, why not remake existing porn flicks? Debbie Does Dallas, the PG-13 summer blockbuster starring Jessica Simpson? Market research is giving me a big thumbs-up on that one. How about blogs? Can we get No Film School, the feature film?

Anyway despite pulling out all the stops, running up the flagpole, trumpeting their loudest fanfare, and using other clichéd phrases, box-office receipts are down for Hollywood. Or maybe it’s all the clichés IN THE MOVIES that have the theaters selling less tickets, despite reports of stronger-than-average air-conditioning. Could Hollywood’s “reduce, reuse, recycle” approach be behind the box office decline?

Nope–that would be giving the public too much credit, because we all know that these days, no one appreciates origininality. It’s so rare that I can’t even spell the word. Even if the art form were being reinvented this summer–the Taxi Driver of this generation could come out next week–I don’t think it would do anything to stop the bleeding, box-office wise.

While I can work my ass off and stay up late at night trying to figure out what that film will be, I’m not sure what the execs can do besides putting digital projectors in the multiplexes: it costs like $37.50 to see a movie at the theater with a beverage, whereas you can rent it for $4 and watch it with 8 friends, Netflix it and copy it before sending it back, TiVo it off satellite or cable, download it off of Kazaa, or even just get the bootleg down the street for less. As a kid I didn’t know of a single way to watch a movie for free because we only had network TV, there was no internet, and DVDs didn’t exist yet. But now people with money who have Hi-def at home can watch their movies on a screen that’s nicer than the one at the sticky-floored theater a drive away. This is where digital comes in–but even with a fancy new projector in the theater, you can’t pause the movie, make some popcorn, and have sex in the middle of it.

What’s that, you’ve done it? Oh, really? You made popcorn right there in the theater?

Well, in the title of this much-longer-than-anticipated post, I made the claim that Batman Begins and Sin City are the best comic book movies of all time, and yet I have barely mentioned either. Well, don’t expect any backing-up to that claim, except for me to say–albeit in the annoying manner in which reviewers claim one movie/album/book to be “superior” to another, as if there is some objective way of measuring these things–that I do think Batman Begins is “better” than all the other Batmans, which is basically saying that it’s better than the first one since the others don’t even qualify. But this could also be because it was very psychological and grounded in reality (so much so that some of the comic book parts of it were jarring–his first appearance in the batsuit, for instance), and my tastes tend towards the explainable rather than the supernatural. I have less to say about Sin City because it’s been longer since I saw it and need to watch it again (if you can “need” to watch a film), and my expectations were rock-bottom after seeing Once Upon a Time in Mexico (having no expectations going in to a movie is often the easiest way to enjoy it… and to not trust your initial impressions). I will say this about Sin City–while there were times I thought the acting was very stiff, there were others when I felt that the full potential of virtual sets was finally being realized, with some subjective reality and German expressionism taking advantage of the technology.

Walking out of Batman Begins the other day (when it was over, I mean), I was left with a feeling that the film was as good as it could have been, and better than it should have. I can’t remember thinking that in a long time. Maybe that’s because what’s going on is that a very, very intelligent director did the best he could with what he had to work with, and it was pretty damn good. But until “what he had to work” with gets better, film is not growing as an art form–and what he had to work with was an existing franchise.