Odds & Ends
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Picking the Classics
Jaime J. Weinman has touched on a topic that fascinates me: trying to pick the movies that will be classics of the future. He has two posts on the topic: one looking at wannabe classics that turn out not to be (here), and one about the process of trying to pick what will hold up later on (here). This is a topic that interests me a lot; too much, in fact to do it justice right now. But I thought I'd post a couple of quick thoughts in reaction to Weinman's pieces, since otherwise who knows when I'd get around to it. (For long-time readers, I warn right now that I am going to be repeating all sorts of things I've said before that are scattered through the site.) Weinman has noted the obvious category of movies that don't age well: Oscar-baiting issues pieces, or middlebrow art films. This is a longstanding observation and complaint and I couldn't put it better than Pauline Kael who in her landmark 1969 essay "Trash, Art and the Movies" complained about critics praising "ghastly 'tour-de-force' performances, movies based on 'distinguished' stage successes or prize-winning novels, or movies that are 'worthwhile,' that make a 'contribution' - 'serious' messagy movies." Fortunately, I think critics tend now to be fairly sceptical of such middlebrow movies: they might still win Best Picture, and they are still often widely admired, but I don't think many people ever kid themselves they'll be classics. Take a film like Frost/Nixon: I liked it, and it has been deservedly well reviewed, but I don't think anyone thinks people will be watching it in ten or twenty years, let alone fifty. Even a much better film like Brokeback Mountain, which I think is an absolutely exquisite piece of work, is just too middlebrow to really be thought of as a classic. Weinman makes this point by referring to the oft-cited example of Stanley Kramer's message movies (he mentions Judgment at Nuremburg, but think too of Guess Who's Coming to Dinner). The Oscar winner's list is full of countless other examples of films that have disappeared down the cultural gurgler (whether deservedly or not): Out of Africa, Ordinary People, Gandhi, Amadeus, Driving Miss Daisy, etc, etc. On the other side of the ledger I'd make two observations. Firstly, Weinman asks which movies his readers thought were classics the moment they saw them. I'd love to claim some great insight here, but I think only once have I done so immediately. That was Pulp Fiction, and I think that I really jumped on that just because I was at the right age - 19 - to feel I'd seen a really definitive movie experience and commit myself to it. (I note, too, that Pulp Fiction often turns up on lists of movies that were considered future classics but which didn't stand the test of time, but I actually still feel pretty confident it will.) As much as I'd like to think I can instantly spot these things, if I was honest, I would say that its usually a year or two out that I'll get a strong view that a film will last: a second viewing often helps to clarify things, and by then there's often a sense that a cultural aura is building around a film as people discover (or rediscover) it on video or DVD. Napoleon Dynamite, Donnie Darko, and The Big Lebowski are definitive examples of this from recent years, although I wasn't on any of those bandwagons. But I can say that a year or so out I was very sure of quite a few that I think will last: The Castle (which for the foreseeble will undoubtedly be the best remembered Australian film by Australians); Groundhog Day (also on Weinman's list); The Matrix (suffering a lull right now because of its sequels, but long term this will be remembered at least as well as the inferior Blade Runner has been); Toy Story; Die Hard; and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (although while I still love this, I'm starting to waiver about its wider cultural impact) all come to mind. The other point I'd make is that if you're trying to spot future classics there is a simple rule: keep it lowbrow. I happen not to agree with Weinman's suggestion of Clueless - I think its pleasant enough but pretty unremarkable - but he's looking in the right sort of places. Respectable Oscar-baiting Hollywood movies usually don't last. Art / foreign / independent films sometimes do, but to get enough cultural purchase they usually have to make a big impact at the time of their release, so you can usually see those coming. The rally unheralded classics though, are the films, shorts, or television shows that are dismissed as frivolous at the time, but championed and rediscovered later. I've made this point before about The Goodies (see this post), but there are many other examples of artists whose work was considered pretty disposable at the time but which has stood the test of time: some silent comedians like Buster Keaton (considered inferior at the time to Charlie Chaplin, but now considered an equal); vaudevillean sound comedians like The Marx Brothers; animators such as Tex Avery, Robert Clampett, and Chuck Jones; comedy directors like Frank Tashlin (who scores on two fronts as he was also a cartoon director); genre directors such as Howard Hawks, John Ford, Douglas Sirk; and so on. A couple of years ago I had a long discussion with a friend who had just re-seen Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and lamented that nothing as brilliant and subversive was made these days: I agreed it was a great film, but reminded him that at the time (and probably still) it was considered grossly inferior to the team's TV show and seventies films. It was only in retrospect that people looked back and argued that Meaning of Life was really good; I suggested there were things coming out today that he wasn't really thinking about that would hold up just as well over time (the suggestion I made at the time was South Park, which still strikes me as a reasonable example.) I should clarify that this isn't meant to be completely anti-elitist in tone: I don't believe pop culture is better than "highbrow" or "art" cinema (for want of better terms). I do think, however, that the chances of seeing really good work are about the same in lowbrow and highbrow culture (again, for want of better terms), and that if you want to get in on the cultural ground floor, you can't afford to be a snob. For some very closely related thoughts see the afore-mentioned post on The Goodies and the latter part of this one. Labels: commentary, snobbery Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Thursday, January 15, 2009
Exhibition Review: Setting the Scene at ACMI
I went along to the Setting the Scene: Film Design from Metropolis to Australia exhibition at ACMI with high hopes and keen interest. The exhibition covers production design in cinema, including the use of sets, locations, and virtual environments. It's a fantastic and under-explored topic, and one in which I have a lot of interest. As an urban planner, the use of locations and the depiction of our spatial environment interests me a lot (I've touched on it in pieces for this site such as this and my writing on Blade Runner), and the postgraduate research I'm currently doing is focused on these sorts of ideas. The good aspects of the exhibition flow directly from the inherent strength of the subject matter, and some interesting exhibits. There are things here that film buffs will get a real kick out seeing, such as original design drawings for the modernist house from Tati's Mon Oncle (as well as a large model of the house); recreated sets from Australia; and - although these have basically nothing to do with the topic of the exhibition - models of vehicles and machines from Speed Racer and the Matrix sequels. The exhibition's origins as an exhibit by the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin is in evidence in the strong focus on European examples: that's fine, although the fusion between those parts of the exhibition and the material added by ACMI occasionally feels a little awkward. If all you are interested in is seeing some interesting behind-the-scenes material, some good production stills, and a brief gloss over the topic, you might find the exhibition worthwhile.  Unfortunately, these basic merits were overshadowed for me by many disappointing aspects of the exhibition, mostly to do with the way it is presented. ACMI has been around for a few years now, and they should be well and truly across the intricacies of running this kind of heavily media-based exhibition. Unfortunately, the exhibition is pretty much a catalogue of fundamental mistakes: I am quite serious in saying that it would reward close study by those interested in museum curatorship as an example of what not to do. The first thing that struck me on entering the hall is that it was very dark. No doubt this was partly for mood and partly to facilitate the display of the many videos positioned through the exhibit. Yet the light levels struck me as far too low, and the spot-lighting for individual exhibits was at times poorly thought out. In some cases, for example, wall-mounted pictures were lit by spot-lights from behind the viewing position, so that when you tried to view them you cast a shadow across the exhibit: given the low ambient light level, this made some exhibits very hard to view. The light level also exacerbated the difficulty of working your way through the exhibition. The exhibition was broken into themes which presented a promising set of subject headings: Spaces of Power, Private Spaces, Labyrinth Spaces, Transit Spaces, Stage Spaces, Virtual Spaces, and Location Spaces. There is, to some extent, a logical order for these exhibits to be viewed, and the exhibits are numbered on the exhibition's flyer in an order that builds in an approximate chronology to the to the sections on virtual spaces and Baz Luhrmann's Australia. But to see it in that order you needed to zigzag through the hall; if, like I did (and many others seemed to), you stick to the wall adjacent to the entry and work along it, you see the exhibition in an illogical order. For example, the virtual spaces section is the third you come to, and Australia is about halfway through, but the section on Metropolis is almost the last. The counter-intuitive layout seemed cruelly ironic given the ostensible focus on heightening awareness of space in movies. Many of the exhibits took the form of video screens, with interviews with production designers, clips from relevant movies, behind-the-scenes footage, or combinations thereof. Video-based presentations are obviously vital to exhibitions of this type, but for an institution totally focused on discussion of the moving image, ACMI seem remarkably clueless about the strengths and weaknesses of such displays, or how they should be presented. There seemed to be a sense that if they just put up informational videos about movies, they were fulfilling their mandate as a centre for the moving image; many displays were the kind of things you'd find as DVD extras (some, like the material on Steven Spielberg's The Terminal, I suspect were exactly that). Yet on DVD we enjoy these things while sitting on our couch, not standing looking at a wall. Video screens are great for presenting examples from films, and short bits of information, but they have an inherent problem in that the viewer is forced to enjoy them at the speed they unfold. Too much of this exhibition was presented through videos which presented superficial information at too slow a pace, meaning much of the exhibition became a painful exercise of waiting for displays to get to the point. Written boards of information might be less fashionable, but they allow the viewer to quickly scan to the points that interest them. Sometimes newfangled isn't actually better. Even the legitimate uses of video presentations seemed poorly thought out. For example, a large video screen in the section on Labyrinth Spaces presented clips from The Name of the Rose, Alien, The Shining, and the most pretentious movie ever made, Last Year at Marienbad. It was an interesting display, but the clips were presented on a big screen one after the other; they cried out to be presented simultaneously on adjacent screens so the viewer could compare one to the other and concentrate on those of most interest. (I appreciate ACMI's resources aren't infinite, but keep in mind that there were several dozen video screens in the exhibition as a whole, and ACMI put together a wall of 750 screens for an exhibition a few years ago. The relative dearth of written information highlighted what seems to me to be a trend in museum exhibitions, which is to let the items on display do all the talking. This is an unfortunate trend because the items are usually only interesting in context. There was very little information about most of the objects presented: in some cases, for example, I was unsure if models presented were actual production models or simply reconstructions for display purposes. There also wasn't much information about individual production designers beyond a basic filmography. I would think, for example, that the section on Ken Adam might have warranted some more detailed discussion on the peculiarities of his style or his place in film history, but I was left to fill those gaps myself; this meant I undoubtedly missed the significance of some of the less familiar figures. I also thought more could have been done to actually explore the issues raised. The introductions to each section were interesting and accessible overviews, but they essentially were stand-alone pieces, without any further follow-up. This meant that the exhibition alluded to all sorts of interest questions, but generally in only the glibbest of ways. For example, the Virtual Spaces exhibit invited some exploration of what it means to take away real places from movies: what are the artistic consequences of such an action? Lars von Treier's Dogville also copped a mention, and raised similar issues about the absence of place in film. The sections on Metropolis and Spaces of Power raised all sorts of interesting questions about the power of films as an ideological tool (there has been a great deal written, for example, about Metropolis as a precursor to the Nazi state). Yet these issues were alluded to in only the most general way. I appreciate that this was an exhibition, not an essay, but I felt that there was scope for something more than the very generalised discussion of such points. I freely admit that its possible I'm being too harsh: I am very interested in this subject area, so perhaps I was too critical, or sought a level of discussion that would have bored the punters silly. I'd therefore be interested in hearing what readers thought. Were others as disappointed by this as I was? Labels: acmi, commentary, exhibition Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. Monday, January 12, 2009
3-D or not 3-D?
I saw Bolt the other day. I won't get a chance to review it properly, but I will note for the record that it's enjoyable without being especially memorable. It's a testament to the professionalism of the creative people at Pixar / Disney: having torn the film down and rebuilt it halfway through production, they still made it slick and fun and involving. Nevertheless, there's an unmistakable by-the-numbers feel about it: there's not much sense that anyone had any real passion for this story. Toy Story, you sensed, reflected real interests of John Lasseter; The Incredibles unmistakably meant something to Brad Bird; and Finding Nemo's story doubtless had personal meaning to Andrew Stanton. But with Bolt the original director was gone, and it really feels like they only made the film because they didn't want to write off all the story development. So it's fun, but passionless. The most interesting thing about it is actually the 3-D. I have seen a few reviews, like Jim Schembri's and Stuart Wilson's, really complement the process. I'm afraid, however, that I don't buy it. It's true that it's way better than old 1950s red-blue 3-D, but that's faint praise. Beyond the novelty value, does it actually improve the movie experience? Having seen a couple of movies in 3-D in recent years now, I don't think so. I said this when I reviewed Beowulf, and David Bordwell made similar comments in response to that film: I'd go farther and say that 3-D hasn't improved significantly since the 1950s. It ought to work: just replicate the eyes' binocular disparity by setting two cameras at the proper interval or, now, by manipulating perspective with software. Yet in films 3-D has always looked weirdly wrong. It creates a cardboardy effect, capturing surfaces but not volumes. Real objects in depth have bulk, but in these movies, objects are just thin planes, slices of space set at different distances from us. If our ancestors had seen the world the way it looks in these movies, they probably wouldn't have left many descendants. I don't know about the "surfaces" versus "volumes" thing (I've only noticed this as a severe problem on films retrofitted to 3-D, and there seems no theoretical reason why a 3-D animated film couldn't perfectly calculate the required offset for each lens) but otherwise think Bordwell is spot on about the experience of watching 3-D. I'm not aware of any research about the reception to 3-D that looks rigorously at things like audience involvement and immersion when watching 3-D; there surely must be some, but a cursory search didn't reveal any, and Bordwell (a leading cognitive film theorist) seems to have been unaware of any when he wrote the above a year or so ago.
So here's my unscientific assessment of my own response. Obviously, there's a benefit in terms of the gee-whiz factor; and in moments like the big chase that opens Bolt, there's a visceral rush from whizzing between and around buildings and vehicles. At a simple level, restoring dimensionality would seem to make the experience more immersive because it literally is more immersive, and because the 3-D aspect mimics the way we see the real world, where we do get depth cues from our binocular vision. On the other hand, there are other ways in which conventional 2-D cinema better reproduces our everyday viewing experience. We don't have to wear glasses (other than those that we wear every day). We don't have to worry about how we position our head: as I noted in the Beowulf review, if you don't sit with your eyes level, the effect "breaks." I also find that the 3-D glasses darken and discolour the image; Bolt was a computer animated film, and one would normally expect bright primary colours, but I found it looked dark and muddy with the glasses on. (Is this an exhibition problem? Are exhibitors supposed to crank up the light levels to counter for the glasses?) I think these problems actually outweigh the benefits of 3-D, since our eyes are so used to decoding 2-D images, and do so with great ease. More intriguingly though, I think there's something subtly but actively distancing about 3-D. I referred to the excitement of the action scenes, but I think that excitement is akin to being on a ride: you're responding at a base level to the sensation of flight and fast movement. This isn't unique to 3-D of course - action movies do this all the time - but the effect is more pronounced in 3-D. Years ago, in an undergraduate essay, I referred in a different context to the distinction between "digetic [meaning, roughly, story-based] excitement" and "non-diegetic [non-story based] excitement." It's basically the difference between watching a movie and saying Watch Out Bolt! or watching the same scene and saying Wow, That's Cool!. We always tend to experience a bit of both when watching a thrill-ride of a movie. However, I think 3-D, by playing on quite instinctive cues (for example, to duck when something flies towards us) favours non-diegetic excitement at the expense of diegetic excitement. It makes us more aware of our own presence in the theatre, emphasising a first-person perspective and repsonse, where we flinch at what is shooting towards us. 2-D provides a certain "distance" for the viewer, which means we don't become as self-conscious of our own position, and instead respond more purely to the narrative: we worry about what happens to Bolt (or whoever) rather than experience the movie as something happening to us. Paradoxically, I think 3-D may be more distancing and less immersive than 2-D. Comments Comments can be made on the individual post's page. |
 This page is for assorted musings and editorialising that don't fit elsewhere on Cinephobia. AFCAtastic: Film Writing Awards Polanski's Repulsion Miffion Impossible Based on a True Story... You There - Have you Ever Kissed a Girl? Round Up Exhibition Review: Star Wars - Where Science Meets... Picking the Classics Exhibition Review: Setting the Scene at ACMI December 2003 May 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 October 2008 November 2008 January 2009 February 2009 May 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 Want to contact me? 
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