entertainment

There are 121 posts filed in entertainment (this is page 15 of 16).

“The Kids Are All Right” Is All Right

The other day, film critic Scott Mendelson released his list of the most overrated films of 2010, which, when tweeted by me, provoked a bit of a firestorm on Twitter. On Scott’s list was The Kids Are All Right, a film which I’ve previously listed as one of my favorite films of the year (although to be honest, it probably won’t make the final cut). Scott also linked to Kim Voynar’s thoughtful piece on the film. It’s this latter piece that I’d like to very briefly respond to today. The following contains spoilers for The Kids Are All Right.

Voynar and others have some pretty serious problems with Lisa Cholodenko’s film. One of the points Voynar makes (that I agree with) is how poorly the actual kids are handled in this film. They are given very little screentime, and their character arcs are handled with the broadest of brush strokes. Voynar continues, though:

Herein lies another problem with the script: It’s younger brother Laser who convinces big sis Joni, who’s just turned 18, to get in contact with their sperm donor/biological father, but the script doesn’t really explore any issues around why a teenage boy raised by two women might be curious about his father or desire a male adult in his life. But once they meet, it’s Joni who’s more drawn to Paul, while Laser is unimpressed; it’s Joni who first suggests getting together with Paul again.

It almost felt to me as though this was a deliberate choice on Cholodenko’s part, to deny that this might be something a boy raised by two women might face as he hits his teen years. If we can accept that in general, boys raised by single moms, or in matriarchal family structures with a grandmother and mother but no father figure might, at some point, benefit from having a male mentor of some sort in their lives (uncle, family friend, Big Brother volunteer, pastor, coach), why wouldn’t the same hold true for a boy raised by two moms?

Voynar doesn’t acknowledge that a) maybe Laser just doesn’t find Ruffalo’s character as interesting as he thought he would, an interaction/dynamic that undoubtedly occurs frequently in real life and b) Laser does indeed take Ruffalo’s advice to heart not to hang out with Laser’s emotionally abusive friend. Sure, the latter is not the most subtle plot development, but it certainly addresses Voynar’s concern about this matter.

Voynar also takes issue with Jules’ implied bi-sexuality:

The relationship that develops between Paul and Jules I found particularly problematic. It’s never said or implied that Jules was previously bisexual, but the script treats her sexual identity as something she can just cast aside. And while I got that she was connecting with Paul emotionally, that he was accepting of her in ways that Jules feels Nic is not, that he “gets” her in a way which perhaps she didn’t even know was lacking in her life, I didn’t buy that this would translate into lesbian Jules suddenly hopping in bed with a guy. Paul and Jules developing a friendship, him becoming her confidant, them maybe talking to each other all the time and shutting Nic out, and that feeling threatening to Nic? That, I would buy…To me, by not explicitly establishing Jules as bi, Cholodenko loses a lot of credibility here.

Jules’ act of adultery was indeed surprising, and the lack of any explicit explanation with regards to bisexuality is a noticeable omission. But did the situation seem inconceivable to me? No. Especially not in this movie, which almost prides itself on treating unconventional sexual situations with nonchalance. In the end, Jules establishes she can’t run away with Paul’s character because she states, emphatically, “I’m a lesbian!” And while she did derive some emotional and sexual satisfaction in being with Paul, this was short-lived and more emblematic of the problems with Jules’ marriage (and the inappropriate seeking behavior it inspired) than with any deep-rooted desire to cast off her sexual identity. I understand the desire for a movie such as this to have a more coherent stance on sexual/gender issues, but that might not have been Cholodenko’s over-arching goal.

Voynar concludes by interpreting the film’s apparently-pat ending:

And then in the end, rather than actually dealing with the underlying issues between Nic and Jules, Cholodenko uses Paul as the scapegoat. The kids more or less forgive Jules for making a choice that threatened their family, while Paul is flatly unforgiven and shunned from the fold. He didn’t ask for any of this to be brought into his life, but it was, and now it’s changed irrevocably who he is and what he wants out of life … but he can’t have it with these children.

I don’t remember who pointed it out first, but it’s interesting that The Kids Are All Right reverses the typical gender roles in films. Usually, it’s the female who serves merely as a plot device to get the male protagonist to realize something about himself and about his future direction. Said females are often discarded or given short shrift (plot/character-wise). But in Kids Are All Right, it’s Ruffalo’s character who gets completely disregarded, both from the perspective of the film and the perspective of its protagonists. In other words, The Kids Are All Right doesn’t shortchange Ruffalo’s character any more than a normal film shortchanges its female side characters. If anything, the film’s crime is that it makes Ruffalo’s character too likable and too fully-formed, which is why his last scene in the film feels so abrupt and unexpected. What’s going to happen to this guy? The audience wants to know.

More to the point, I have a much different take on the ending of this film. Annette Bening does have that brilliant, Oscar-worthy moment towards the end, in which she expounds on the difficulties of marriage (saying that it’s “fucking hard”). But I do not get the sense that the removal of Paul from their lives is going to solve all their problems. Bening’s speech is part-conclusion, part-beginning. They’ve struggled through the horrors of an adulterous affair, and now they’re going to have to go through the painful process of rebuilding their family. It’s not a pat resolution. It’s the acknowledgement that there is still much work ahead. But maybe, just maybe, everything will be okay in the end.

Voynar continues:

They are half his kids in the purely biological sense, but they are all Nic’s and Jules’ in the emotional one. The problem is, I didn’t see anything in his previous interactions with the kids that would convince me that, having wanted to meet their biological father for so long, they would excise him from their lives so readily because their mom decided to have an affair with him.

Really? If anything, the kids’ dismissal of Paul is an affirmation of how good a job Nic and Jules have been at raising them. Faced with an intruder that completely f*cked things up, their reaction is to cast it out of their household. Maybe that’s what the title is all about; that these kids,who have weathered growing up in an unconventional family and an adulterous affair with a sperm donor that they themselves sought out, still understand that in the end, family is the most important thing, and the ties that bind aren’t necessarily biological ones.

The Totally Rad Show’s Media Mash-Up Segment is Brilliant

I always loved The Totally Rad Show, but now that they’ve been making shows on basically a daily basis, I dare say that they’re even better than before. The newer, shorter format allows for even more experimentation with different show types and formats. What results is some truly original content that combines humor, geekery, and media knowledge into something that everyone can enjoy.

In particular, I find their Media Mashup segments to be brilliant. Aside from Jeff Cannata’s clues (which occasionally border on completely non-sensical), these are a blast to watch, and follow the cardinal rule of any good game show: they are fun for the viewer to play as well:

“Tagline Takedown” is also pretty damn good:

P.S. You know I love you, Jeff.

My Tentative Top 10 Movies of 2010 (Revised)

I had the chance to visit my old professor, Austin Sarat, today. As usual, he asked me to give him some film recommendations. Here’s the e-mail I sent him, which features a tentative list of my top 10 films of 2010 (feel free to compare this with the previous list I made in August [hence the “revised” in the title of this post]. Damn, there’ve been a ton of great films in the past few months!). Tune into the /Filmcast this Sunday for my final list:

***

Professor Sarat,

So good to see you today, and glad to hear you and the family and the academic career are going well. Do check out the materials I gave you. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Here’s a very tentative list of my Top 10 films of 2010, with links to Amazon Blu-Ray listing where appropriate:

1. The Fighter
2. The Social Network
3. How to Train Your Dragon (for the kids)
4. Animal Kingdom (you will probably find this film boring, but I really enjoyed it)
5. Mother
6. Inception
7. The Kids Are All Right
8. Toy Story 3
9. Black Swan
10. The King’s Speech

Other movies that I enjoyed, but that you might not necessarily enjoy:
Catfish – a fascinating documentary about how people construct their identities online these days
Exit Through the Gift Shop – another great documentary, this one about the nature of modern art, as told by graffiti legend Banksy
Winter’s Bone – regarded by many as one of the best films of 2010

Let me know if you find anything worthwhile here. And let’s keep in touch!

Sincerely,
David

Movie Websites Are in a Race to the Bottom

Nick Nunziata, editor-in-chief at CHUD, has written his take on how the role of movie websites has changed over the past decade or so. It rambles a bit, but there are some genuinely good insights about how studios have been increasingly selective about who they grant access to and how they distribute their information to the masses:

There are amazing reps at the studios who have legitimate relationships with some webmasters that aren’t a front and are actual relationships. The same goes for a lot of the filmmakers, though there are a few big names who are ‘friends’ with webmasters mainly as a means on promoting their product. It’s a weird, ever-changing dynamic but it works. It works because the smaller film companies still have a more natural relationship with the internet. The studios have won the war but the sites have won the key battle: Shining a light on the great movies. There’s always room for the balance to exist as the websites find the gems that aren’t getting forty million dollar ad campaigns. But I think we as a whole have become marginalized.

There’s also a great deal of thinly-veiled contempt for sites (which I assume includes /Film) whose purpose is, at least partially, aggregation:

The thing I’ve noticed now (it’s good to get the point in paragraph six, FINALLY) is how many of the sites are covering stuff that previously would have had no place in our editorial visions. Viral videos. Homemade spoofs. Minutia that is at best tangentially connected to what the sites are intended for. The kind of things we’d typically run on our message boards or link from our Facebook accounts. There’s a part of me that feels it’s cheap and beneath many sites (and we’re guilty from time to time with stuff in our ‘Watch it Now’ section) but it’s also survival. It’s just plain survival. It’s cheap content and people respond to it, a fact that incenses me. 

I think Nunziata is primarily responding to the nagging feeling that the internet is both getting dumber, and making us dumber. It’s hard not to sympathize with this point of view; when some 20-year old is raking it in by posting a photo of a cat who looks like Hitler, while the 2,000 word essay/interview you just slaved over is getting 10 pageviews per hour, the whole of humanity loses something.

But I think Nunziata makes a number of wrong turns in this piece, even if they’re not made explicitly. First, there’s the unspoken conflation of film news and film criticism, a conflation that seems to occur time and time again in the discourse on this topic.

I have a great deal of respect for the concept that there are experts in certain fields, and that art and culture can be serious areas of study. And while I think we are all learning, some people have clearly been learning for longer than others. We should all revere film expertise, whether we disagree with it or not, and we should all respect the concept that some people may be more equipped to expound about film than others, and that there can be true cultural value in this act of expounding (even though I’d argue there’s still some value to throwing around lay-opinions).

But many film websites also choose to write about film news as well (/Film included), and the “news” moniker raises the parallel idea that film websites do “journalism.” To quote Maude Lebowski, I think writing about film news can be a fun, zesty enterprise. It can entertain people and stir up lively debate and discussion. However, only in certain instances should this be considered seriously as journalism. What those instances should be is probably worth another post. But will the world really lose out if it doesn’t know what your take is on ____ being cast in _____ movie? I’m not so sure.

What I’m trying to say is that film criticism is not the same thing as covering film news. And even though many websites do both, these two things should not be viewed as equals or equally valuable.

The second thing I take issue with is the implication (again unspoken – and maybe I’m incorrect in how Nunziata feels about this) is that there’s something wrong with aggregation. Setting aside the fact that some of the most successful websites on the internet started out as aggregators: I don’t know about Nick, but a lot of us got into this because we love films, and we love geeking out about them. Go to slashfilm.com and you’ll see film news and movie reviews, but also viral videos and posters. Sure, some of the latter might get more traffic than some of the former. But does that mean our site should be looked down upon? What I love about /Film is that, at its best, it restores in me the joy and excitement of movies. If that’s all that a site aspires to, does that make it worthy of scorn and derision? I say no.

Finally, there’s the idea in Nick’s piece that somehow, external forces have conspired to marginalize movie websites. But it is nowhere written that those with the best writing or the best ideas or the best content should expect to rise to the top. In the wild west of the internet, those that are most successful have been able to combine these elements with business and technological savvy, which allows them to reap page views and revenue. Just because you are old does not mean you have to be irrelevant. Likewise, just because you are the best does not mean you should expect that to be enough.

Update: Nick has responded to this post via Twitter:

Thus, I take back the relevant parts referring to /Film that I’ve written above. Any misconstrual is my fault, though I think that many of my points still stand.

Information Seeking Behavior in The Big Lebowski

Emily Dill and Karen L. Janke from Indiana University have written a wonderfully titled academic paper: “‘New Shit Has Come To Light’: Information Seeking Behavior in The Big Lebowski.” A sample:

Whether intentional by the writer/director Coen Brothers or not, The Big Lebowski reveals how subjective the terms “information” and “facts” truly are in the 21st century; a world of nonstop news and ubiquitous talking heads. What is truth to one person is not necessarily truth to another — what is merely a ringer briefcase full of “whites” to one person can be a $1,000,000 epiphany to the next. The film’s most important contribution to the study of information seeking behavior is its illustration of how a highly complex information search is not about finding the “answer,” but rather about an individual’s ability to make sense of and create meaning from the process of information seeking.

I love when academia and stoner comedies collide. This instance looks to be suitably entertaining.

For further reading on Lebowski, check out “Life Does Not Start and Stop At Your Convenience: The Greatest Mystery of The Big Lebowski.“

The Great Train Movies

As Tony Scott’s Unstoppable hits theaters this week, film writers around the internet are reminiscing about train movies. Time magazine has a nice list of their Top 10 Train Movies, but film critic Matt Zoller Seitz has a slideshow over at Salon that I think really gets at why rail travel can be such a fascinating film subject. From his description of Malick’s Days of Heaven:

Director Terrence Malick is a master at assembling music, dialogue, sound effects and images through editing so that the specifics of time and place that normally define movies are subsumed into a perpetual present, an endless moment that the viewer doesn’t so much watch as ride, the way a kite rides a breeze. The train sequence near the beginning of “Days of Heaven,” 103 seconds of bliss scored to banjo wizard Leo Kottke’s “The Train and the Gate,” is a great example. It describes a finite journey from one U.S. state to another, but it’s not about what’s happening or where it’s happening; it’s about the thoughts and feelings that tumble through the narrator’s head as she remembers it all.