There are 121 posts filed in entertainment (this is page 5 of 16).
I found myself unexpectedly moved by this video essay on the virtues of Superman Returns. In fact, it moved me much more than the film itself, and forced me to re-consider my thoughts on the film (which have generally been lukewarm). Maybe we’ve gotten Superman Returns wrong this whole time?
(via Matt Zoller Seitz)
We recently recorded our Top 10 of 2011 episode for the /Filmcast (you can read my top 10 here). As the episode wound down, I made some (admittedly) objectionable remarks about why I didn’t feel The Artist should deserve Best Picture this year. The Artist is a lovely, beautiful film that proves you don’t need sound effects or dialogue to make an effective film. But is it really the crowning achievement of cinema for the year 2011, as the potential Best Picture designation implies? (Incidentally, The Artist just this evening picked up the Critics Choice Award for Best Picture of the year).
After the episode, Matt Singer wrote me an e-mail in which he asked the following:
So [The Artist is] beautiful and moving by your admission, but Academy voters are only going to vote for it because it’s nostalgic and old fashioned? Dave your #1 movie of the year is WAR HORSE, one of the few recent movies as nostalgic and old-fashioned as THE ARTIST. What’s the difference?
I had a chance to attempt to answer Matt’s question in a lively AIM chat today. Here it is, slightly edited for length:
David Chen: I mean
David Chen: I actually think I have a point
***
So is there a difference between “your favorite” and “the best?” Can there be an “objective” best, by any conceivable measure? Or is it always just going to be what Academy members happen to kind of be into that year?
About a year ago, writer/director Kevin Smith premiered the film Red State at the Sundance Film Festival. While I enjoyed the film, the story behind Smith’s post-film Q&A was what dominated the headlines. Smith’s actions were tantamount to a direct insult to entertainment journalists and film distributors. In fact, Smith had been leading up to this for awhile, with a well-covered rant about press coverage of Cop Out and a refusal to screen Red State for press (or to participate in press events). Some of my film writer colleagues did not take too kindly to this, with people like Drew McWeeny promising never to write about Smith or any of his films forever.
Last night, a Twitter conversation ensued in which McWeeny and several others reaffirmed this position. You can find that conversation in its near entirety by clicking here.
I’ve thought about their position for a long time and I’m going to admit: I just don’t get it. When I think of industries such as politics or technology, most of the primary players in those industries have an antagonistic relationship with the press. There is almost always a disconnect between how someone wants their story/product to be covered, and how an observer/critic wants to cover it. But I cannot remember many instances in which press figures swore off covering someone because that person was being a dick, not to the journalist specifically, but to the press at large. In what other industry would such behavior by journalists be acceptable?
Kevin Smith is a public figure whose actions and films may or may not have significance for the fields he participates in (e.g. film, podcasting, distribution, etc.). Decide whether or not they do, and then proceed accordingly. But shirking your responsibilities because he’s acted dickishly? Because you have a distaste for covering him? Because his neurotic fans make you cringe? That just lessens all of us.
[Side note: I’ve found Exquisite Tweets to be a useful tool for preserving Twitter conversations. So many interesting things get said every day and vanish forever into the ether. This service helps put a stop to that.]
I wrote a post for slashfilm.com looking back at the music of the Mission: Impossible series. Check it out.
New York magazine has an interview with Suzanne Sena, who plays fictional news anchor Brooke Alvarez on The Onion News Network. Suzanne was a finalist in the audition to replace Kathie Lee Giffords as Regis Philbin’s co-host. She expounds on her biggest regret of the situation:
The $40 million paycheck I didn’t receive. It was an absolute highlight of my career, but I’ve had many more highlights since then, and the Onion is definitely one of them. To me, it was having my hand on the brass ring and then losing it, but it taught me so much.
I can’t imagine being so tantalizing close to a $40 million payday, then having it slip away. Would I be able to psychologically bounce back from that? Not sure, but the fact that Suzanne has is certainly encouraging.
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| Errol Morris recently signed my DVD copy of The Thin Blue Line. Morris is in the background in the orange coat. |
One of my favorite filmmakers, Errol Morris, recently stopped by his hometown of Cambridge, MA as part of a tour to promote his newest book, Believing Is Seeing. Morris is basically all the things I endeavor to be: an incredibly talented person at his craft, who is concerned with the nature of truth and the mysteries of the mind (especially as they relate to photography). For a brief taste of what his book is like, check out his series of essays for the NYTimes on the Fenton cannonball photographs.
I managed to see Morris when he spoke at the Harvard School of Design, but Morris just posted on his site a full transcript of his talk at the Brattle Theatre (a place near and dear to my heart) and it’s well-worth the read. I enjoyed his answer to a question about why the book is titled “Believing Is Seeing”:
Why the title is Believing is Seeing instead of Seeing is Believing? Well, one seems to be far more clever than the other, although much to my chagrin it’s been used by several other writers. I felt I should read their books. One is a romance novel about a ménage à trois, which was satisfying for a short while, but quickly got kind of tedious. The other is just a straight ahead art book, not to disparage art books, but it did not seem to be terribly interesting. And the third, of course, is my effort. Why Believing is Seeing? Because we somehow think that vision comes to us in some pure native state, as if we don’t bring anything to it. It’s a reminder that what we see is often based on our preconceptions, misconceptions, we don’t come to the world as neutral observers. We come filled with bias, prejudice, vested interests of every kind. Why not occasionally be reminded of that fact?
Read It Later, a “save it to read later offline” app for Android and iOS, has compiled usage data to synthesize a report on the most frequently read authors on the service. Obviously, this comes with a bunch of caveats; the report itself identifies some of them:
Read It Later has a unique dataset to explore these kinds of questions. Nearly 4 million users rely on Read It Later when they click the “read later” in their browser, tablet or smartphone—and they come back to our app to dig deeper into the stories they’ve saved, recipes they’ve discovered, or videos their friends have recommended. That means Read It Later users aren’t just drive-by visitors to a piece of content—they’re passionate about it. The content is important enough that they added it to their queue so they wouldn’t miss it.
Overall, though, this provides an interesting view on who and what people are reading, and what types of content are most popular on these types of services. The above chart shows authors who have the highest “rate of return,” where people actually returned to check on their stories repeatedly. No surprise: previous /Filmcast guest Alan Sepinwall, an erudite, articulate, insightful television writer, scores right near the top.
[New life goal: making this list one day.]
[Side note: Read It Later is a pretty great app for $3.]
We had the opportunity to review The Muppets on the /Filmcast recently, and while I stand by that review, I’ve also been grateful to read a bunch more informed opinions in the past few days. One of the things that I found irritating about the response to our review (both on Twitter, in the comments, and via e-mail) has been the idea that I should’ve just “enjoyed the movie for what it was.”
This reasoning annoys me for two reasons. First of all, it plays into the whole internet mentality that only one opinion about a film can be correct and that other opinions should be discounted or cowed into submission. We’ve seen this sentiment play out on numerous occasions in the past.
Secondly, it implicitly demands that this film, The Muppets, be less than excellent. Not every film can be an amazing work of art, but is it wrong to expect each one to at least be an exemplar of its category? I think not. Jason Segel (who co-wrote The Muppets screenplay) was handed a remarkable opportunity and substantial resources to work with a beloved property. I found the film to be delightful, a lightly polished piece of light, fluffy entertainment. But as a film, was it emotionally resonant? Did it evince quality, thoughtful storytelling? Did it pay homage to the muppets while bringing their sensibility into a new era? In my opinion, it did not (you can listen to my review for more details on this).
Other people have made this point far better than me. As always, I encourage you to check out the Extra Hot Great podcast’s review, which adeptly strips away the nostalgia and evaluates this film with brutal honesty.
I’d strongly recommend Elizabeth Stevens’ sprawling essay on the muppets, which is a loving exploration to the work of Henson. In one portion of the essay, Stevens questions why Kermit (once voiced by Jim Henson but now voiced by Steven Whitmire) needed to continue existing at all after Henson’s death:
It would’ve made more artistic sense than what happened. Instead of an organic personnel shift, Whitmire became Kermit, which wasn’t only a disservice to that character, but also a real disservice to Whitmire. There was no place for him to take the role. If he strays too far from Henson, embodying Kermit with the parts of his personality that weren’t in Henson, nostalgic fans will be disappointed. He can only attempt the same impression over and over. It’s not the kind of art Henson produced. It’s very un-Muppet.
I was reading Matt Gemmell’s great essay the other day about why copying occurs so frequently in the tech industry and I couldn’t help but think of Stevens remarks. One thing that both writers agree on: a copy can never be better than the original. By consigning Whitmire to imitating Kermit, it’s a lose/lose for both Whitemire and for the character.
Stevens’ essay was written before the film came out, but if she were to review the film, my guess is it would read a lot like Jason Bellamy’s review of the film at Indiewire:
Make no mistake, watching the gang perform “Rainbow Connection” is lump-in-the-throat touching and realistic, too (not that the Muppets have ever been about realism), but it comes off like a concession – that the Muppets’ best days are behind them and the most magic we can hope for is an occasional performance of their greatest hits. Maybe that’s true. Maybe what Segel’s film shows us is that Henson and Frank Oz, the puppeteers extraordinaire who through their voices and hands gave so many of these characters their spirit, are irreplaceable.
Compare The Muppets to a film such as Abrams’ Star Trek, which does honor to the original characters while striking out on its own (quite literally, using a brand new timeline). Despite that film’s shortcomings, I truly believe it set the standard for how these film remake/adaptations should be done. I’ll take Big-Hands-Kirk over endless, empty waves of nostalgia any day. At least the former is trying something new.