Review: ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Embraces the Magic and Mystery
There’s a trippy scene in which a character floats into a resurrection, an ethereal drift that borders on the surreal. It’s a fleeting bliss-out in a series that knows how to bring the weird but has too often neglected to do so amid its blaster zapping, machinations and Oedipal stressing and storming.
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
Some Points I Wanted to Make...
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| Eddie Izzard (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
1) I did want you to tell me the names of the actors who played the various parts and possibly to tell me other shows they appeared in. The point of that in this case would be to make clear the key participants in this project were all vets of film and TV, suggesting (among other things) that money was probably invested in this project upfront. These people had records of previous success. As flops go, this was a big one.
2) Also, talking about the careers of the actors provides a natural transition either out of or into a discussion of the acting.
3) But how would you know what these actors did earlier in their careers? I did NOT intend to use Turnitin as a bludgeon to discourage you from doing *any* research. A quick Google to discover who is this Eddie Izzard is acceptable - and won't ruin your T score anymore than using Google to find out the hours of the restaurants you reviewed. What I *don't* want you to do is use the internet to read reviews by others and turn your own review into a compilation rather than a fresh take.
4) Take a look at this review from the Chronicle that I linked to on the class blog several years ago. It's not great, but you see how David Wiegand has a catchy little lead that makes clear his focus. This review has a good old-fashioned thesis!! And then he lets us know who in the cast does what and what there backgrounds are. I actually think he puts all this info too high in the review. But notice how about 2/3rds in, he gives rich detail about the excellence of the detail in the background animation. Most reviews are a mixture of supported and unsupported generalizations. If you richly and persuasively support *some* of your generalizations, readers are more likely to take your unsupported ones on faith.
https://www.sfgate.com/default/article/BoJack-Horseman-review-Saddled-with-mediocre-5698929.php
Maybe My Favorite New Critic
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| The Looming Tower (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
But then Chesney zeroes in on the suspect in a way that twists the conversation so slowly toward accusation and ultimately confession that you almost don’t realize it’s happened. Why is there blood on the suspect’s hands but not on his clothes if he didn’t completely change his outfit? Why’s the price tag still on his belt? By the time Chesney is shouting and pounding on the table between the two men to extract viable intelligence (the phone number of an al-Qaeda higher-up), the scene has spiraled in on itself so skillfully that the audience has been manipulated just as much as the suspect.
A lot of this works because of Camp, who’s masterful in the part. And just as much is thanks to director John Dahl, who gives a scene that’s just two men talking in a room a sense of pace and excitement that’s inescapable. (I love how often he pins his camera on one of the two men as the other is talking, to judge their reactions as they try to figure out what they’re going to say next to achieve their goals.) And, sure, much of it is informed by the fact that we in the audience know Chesney and his cohorts won’t be successful in stopping the big attack that’s coming. Indeed, if you’ve read the book, you know one of the characters will die in that very attack.
But I really appreciate how writer Bash Doran didn’t push too hard with this scene. She simply let it play out like an interrogation scene you’ve seen in many other cop dramas, as the two men circle each other warily and look for weakness. The Looming Tower gains strength from its familiarity, from the way it engages with how cop dramas can use their workaday characters and scenarios to talk about issues that impact society as a whole. More recent police procedurals, which are far more rigid in how they think about solving a case per week, have lost sight of that just a bit. The Looming Tower, by virtue of its ultimate endpoint, knows that every case solved just leads to more suspects to track down.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
A Review of Hansel and Gretel with Comments from 2013
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| Series for social welfare 1961, fairy tale of the brothers Grimm, Hansel and Gretel :*Ausgabepreis: 20+10 Pfennig :*First Day of Issue / Erstausgabetag: 2. Oktober 1961 :*Michel-Katalog-Nr.: 371 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters Grade: ** | Posted: Tuesday, February 12, 2013 12:08 pm Produced by Will Ferrell's company, UH-OH. THE PARTICIPLE ‘PRODUCED’ MODIFIES ‘YOU.’ NOT A GOOD START you can't be blamed for thinking that 'Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters', update on the famous fairy tale of the brother and sister, who escaped the clutches of a witch by burning her up in an oven, would be a straight comedy. THIS COULD BE RIGHT. CAN I FEEL CONFIDENT THE SMALL-TOWN REVIEWER KNOWS WHAT OTHER FILMS WF HAS PRODUCED? The film does contain its fair share of laughs, but coupled with the director's style, which seems anchored by the notion that there's enough blood in any scene, REWRITE THE PREVIOUS. THINK I GET IT BUT HAD TO STOP AND CONSIDER the movie ends up being a disjointed mess. OKAY. HE’S SET UP THE ‘DISJOINTED’ BY SUGGESTING THE MOVIE CONTAINS SOME LAUGHS AND TOO MUCH BLOOD. THE REVIEW HAS A FOCUS
The story, which is sprinkled liberally with anachronisms and gizmos, GOOD POINT begins with the young siblings being led into the woods by their father and deserted there together. LOSE THE ‘TOGETHER.’ The two, naturally, IS THIS HIS WAY OF SUGGESTING FAIRYTALES AREN’T REALISTIC? DUH. stumble into a cottage made of candy, where a ghastly witch imprisons them. They figure out early on how to kill a witch - you need to burn her. And as they save their own lives, they begin a career as witch hunters. ‘AS’? RIGHT FROM THAT MINUTE?
Their latest assignment is from the mayor of Augsburg - Figure out who is kidnapping local children. Jeremy Renner (“The Bourne Legacy”) is a great actor REALLY? I DIDN’T KNOW THE CRITICAL WORLD HAD COME TO THAT CONCLUSION, and he gives his Hansel character such a tongue-in-cheek approach that you can’t help but like him. THIS JUDGMENT WORKS FOR ME Gemma Arterton (“Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time”) is his resourceful, no-nonsense sister Gretel. YOU’VE JUDGED HIS ACTING. HOW ABOUT HER’S? Both carry high-powered weaponry (for the period in which this is set, that is) and are expert shots. She carries a sort of automatic crossbow and he carries a kind of arm cannon.
There are no surprises, unless you count the troll, OKAY. THERE’S A TROLL COMING BUT THE SURPRISE IS NOT COMPLETELY SPOILED as this is a straightforward exercise of pursuit and deduction with the siblings figuring out that the lost children are being prepared for a rite to be performed on the night of the blood moon. That night, all the witches in attendance will be rendered fireproof, something the head of the coven, Muriel (Famke Janssen), wants desperately to see happen. LOTS OF PLOT. NOT SURE I WANT TO KNOW QUITE THIS MUCH. NOW ALL WE HAVE LEFT TO IMAGINE IS THE EXACT NATURE OF HER DEFEAT.
The film 'DOES TAKE' WOULD REFLECT IDEA OF HUMOR ALREADY INTRODUCED takes many stabs at humor along the way. Hansel is a diabetic, as he has been hooked on sugar since his first encounter with the witch's house made of candy, FUNNY while woodcut portraits of the missing children attached to bottles of milk can't help but make you laugh. OKAY. TOOK ME THREE READS TO UNDERSTAND THE PRECEDING; REWRITE, PLEASE; I THOUGH HE MEANT PORTRAITS OF CHILDREN SHOWING THEM ATTACHED TO MILK BOTTLES…
Don't even bring up the odd variety of witches seen during the film's climax. The Siamese twins who can kill you with their ninja moves have to be seen to be believed. THE TWO PRECEDING SENTENCES AREN’T PARTICULARY WELL WRITTEN. I HOPE THE TWO CLICHES JUMP OUT.
The film is like pollen in the spring - all over the place, and doesn't do anyone much good. KIND OF NICE? CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE Renner and Arterton are good sports throughout, playing things straight in a film they must have had reservations about, TYPICAL COMMENT IN REVIEWS: ACTORS MUST HAVE FIGURED OUT AT SOME POINT THIS WAS A BAD PROJECT while Janssen is perfectly cast, bringing the right combination of menace and sexiness to the role. She admitted in a recent interview that the only reason she took the part was to pay for a new kitchen. GOOD KNOWLEDGE
If I can say anything positive about “Hansel & Gretel” it’s that it at least looks cool. The action scenes are pure visual spectacle. THERE’S LAZY WRITING, AND THERE’S GOOD WRITING. THE REVIEWER HAS ALREADY SAID SOME POSITIVE THINGS. HE NEEDS TO TWEAK HIS “IF’ CLAUSE
Friday, February 23, 2018
A Thoughtful Quote from a Review of a New Movie
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| The Best Science Fiction Stories: 1952 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
That the expedition is populated by five women, played by five stellar actresses — it’s hard to pick a standout — adds a startling depth to the film. Instead of seeing an exploration of desire through the more typically male filter that often drives thrillers, action, science fiction, and horror, we see it through female eyes. And that makes each piece feel fresh and unexpected.
In fact, though its parallels to Stalker are undeniable and Garland has an established track record in the science-fiction genre, Annihilation feels wholly unexpected and raw. It is a disturbing film for reasons that are almost metaphysical. It rarely moves quickly, the camera lingering over images that are hard to forget because they’re so eerie, the story leaving just enough unexplained to evoke mystery and wonder.
Thursday, February 22, 2018
The 60s Generation Sharing a TV Theme Song in an Ironic Way
Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket is, as one critic put it, a tale of "relentless discomfort and (the) complicated morality" of the war in Vietnam and perhaps a masterpiece. Is the final scene of the movie a comment on a generation united but infantile as the unit's depleted ranks walk away from the killing grounds of Hue?
Whatever the larger point, they all know the lyrics.
Getting Gangnam Style
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| Burger King, Seoul, South Korea. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
"I have to admit I've watched it about 15 times," said a CNN anchor. "Of course, no one here in the U.S. has any idea what Psy is rapping about."
I certainly didn't, beyond the basics: Gangnam is a tony Seoul neighborhood, and Park's "Gangnam Style" video lampoons its self-importance and ostentatious wealth, with Psy playing a clownish caricature of a Gangnam man. That alone makes it practically operatic compared to most K-Pop. But I spoke with two regular observers of Korean culture to find out what I was missing, and it turns out that the video is rich with subtle references that, along with the song itself, suggest a subtext with a surprisingly subversive message about class and wealth in contemporary South Korean society.
This type of analysis suggests several
points:
1) In
your reviews, I want you to do as little research as possible. (That's why I
run all your reviews through Turnitin.) I want a fresh personal take in which
you draw on what you already know - though if it happens you already know a
great deal about the genre or the specific situations in the object reviewed,
of course you draw on it. Some publications might want you to do research
beforehand and create a combined review/cultural analysis. What I want is your
"hot take." Personally, though I wanted at some point to do research
and to track down the kind of analysis of the video contained in the Atlantic
that I link to above, I wanted to take time to register my own reactions and my
own reading of the video before seeking out informed interpretation.
2) I
assume a natural inhibition in reviewing something like Gangnam Style because
it is our wish - I hope your wish - not to seem culturally ignorant or racially
insensitive. With all that in mind, my first take on the video was:
* The music was catchy, what some would call an earworm, memorable
to the point of irritation.
* The music alone did not explain the video's appeal. Without the
images and/or narrative, the music would quickly have faded from memory.
* I was amused and impressed by Psy's comic physicality, by which
I mean his posture and actions were awkwardly graceful - or gracefully awkward.
I was comfortable judging that part of the video by what I considered to be
widespread ideas concerning which styles of physical action are funny
and which aren't - at least by Western standards - and the makers of the video
seemed to understand the conventions of the music video as developed in
the United States.
* I appreciated the general technical mastery - the multiple cuts,
the careful framing of shots, the choreography of dance and motion.
* It did have a narrative through line. Psy falls in love, or at
least in "like." Are we invited to judge the nature of that
attraction? The young woman's blond hair seemed to invite judgment.
* But I still felt at a loss in terms of getting all the themes
and implications. I was not surprised to learn it was probably satire, but if I
had learned that its creator thought it was a celebration of sexual
freedom and material possessions, well, I would have been somewhat surprised -
but not completely. Not to get too English Major-ish, there's a famous
comment by the poet John Keats. “At once it struck me, what quality
went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in literature, and which
Shakespeare possessed so enormously. I mean Negative Capability, that is
when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
reaching after fact and reason.” I like to interpret this from a critic’s point
of view to mean that a sense of fully getting a work of art is not
desirable. A true work of art - the pundit said - is a mystery that we never
quite solve.
* The video made we want to initiate conversations with those
whom I assumed were its target audience, you guys maybe? That is, I saw it as a
kind of measuring stick against which I could evaluate differences in
taste as determined by different class and age.
* And, of course, when in doubt when it comes to music videos, we
can fall back on the surreal by which I simply mean regarding image or images
as dream-like and irrational. Why ask what it means when I can ask what
does it mean to me? Was it not Freud - it was; I looked it up - who said, “What
is common in all these dreams is obvious. They completely satisfy wishes
excited during the day which remain unrealized. They are simply and
undisguisedly realizations of wishes.”
* The fact the video was for about two years the most watched video on Youtube has to mean something about the universality of ... something.
-->
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
Pete Wells
Pete Wells is one of The New York Times main restaurant/food reviewers; he's one of the "big guns" in the reviewing world. His review of Guy Fieri's restaurant has been dubbed "the most widely read food review ever." Wells is a gifted writer and conscious of more than just whats on his plate. Here is an excerpt from his recent review of "Salt Bae's" new eatery, Nusr-Et.
"A few years ago, restaurants were still a refuge from the electronic grid, places where we could eat and talk without converting existence into digital form. Phone cameras changed that, and now it often seems that the point of going out to eat is to post a digital image proving we were there."
"A few years ago, restaurants were still a refuge from the electronic grid, places where we could eat and talk without converting existence into digital form. Phone cameras changed that, and now it often seems that the point of going out to eat is to post a digital image proving we were there."
Parul Seghal
"There’s not a trace of piety, however. “Mean” calls for a fat, fluorescent trigger warning start to finish — and I say this admiringly. Gurba likes the feel of radioactive substances on her bare hands. She wants to find new angles from which to report on this most ancient of stories, to zap you into feeling." - Parul Seghal
Wesley Morris
"Who would have thought that a series addicted to the high of movement could also summon a solemnity that leaves you moved?"‐ Wesley Morris
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
Laura Snapes
Laura Snapes is based in London and has contributed to Pitchfork, NPR, the Guardian, and a whole lot more. This is a paragraph from her review of Priests' newest album that I really liked. It's compelling, creative, and says in words what I felt when I first listened to "Nothing Feels Natural."
"As we enter 2017, we’re in danger of tying every faintly despairing new piece of culture to the ascent of America’s Cheeto-in-Chief, as if January 20 flipped a switch that instantly soured all milk. But injustice wasn’t born earlier this month; it just became apparent to many who never had much cause to worry about it before. And the lyrics to Nothing Feels Natural show the existential weight of having spent a lifetime fighting. Priests’ debut has an entirely different energy from their previous releases, expanding into a rich diorama of stinging guitar, funk, yearning indie pop, and jazz. The leap in range and ambition from their 2015 EP Bodies and Control and Money and Power is huge: There hasn’t been a punk debut this certain and poised since Savages’ Silence Yourself."
Sunday, February 18, 2018
Thursday, February 15, 2018
Taylor Swift Sued But the Song Lyrics Too 'Banal' to Steal
Here's the link
“In the early 2000s, popular culture was adequately suffused with the concepts of players and haters to render the phrases ‘playas… gonna play’ or ‘haters… gonna hate,’ standing on their own, no more creative than ‘runners gonna run’; ‘drummers gonna drum’; or ‘swimmers gonna swim,’” he wrote. “The concept of actors acting in accordance with their essential nature is not at all creative; it is banal....”
Not only is the concept not creative and banal, he wrote, the lyrics themselves “lack the modicum of originality and creativity required for copyright protection.” Dancing in the hiss of the sizzle, he concluded that they are “too brief, unoriginal, and uncreative to warrant protection under the Copyright Act.”
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Thursday, February 8, 2018
I Add Something to My Thoughts about Comedy and Laughter
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| Slim Pickens as Major "King" Kong riding a nuclear bomb to oblivion in Dr. Strangelove. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Martin Esslin in his book the “Theatre of Absurd” (says) that absurdist theatre has renounced arguing about the absurdity of the human condition; it merely presents it in being- in terms of concrete stage images”. He indicated too, the influence of Camus’ Existentialism behind the absurd, with the idea that men are trapped in a hostile universe that (is) totally subjective, describing the nightmare that could follow when solitude and silence were taken to the ultimate degree.
Humour within absurdist plays is often found as black humour in which disturbing or sinister subjects like death, disease, or warfare, are treated with bitter amusement, usually in a manner calculated to offend and shock.
And here's an excerpt from an essay called "How Absurd Do You Like Your Art?"
Then there are examples of very absurd, senseless works of art that enjoy enduring popularity. This is captured in the category, “Absurdism,” in which the work of art doesn’t give solutions to the incongruity, and the audience is never expected to be able to resolve it. Only with Herculean efforts are people able to come up with their own, idiosyncratic interpretations, but often without any confidence that their own interpretation was the only right one. In the literature genre of Absurdism, the fact that it can’t be figured out is the whole point—communicating a message of meaninglessness in life.
Occasionally, feature-length Absurdist films are released, such as Matthew Barney’s The Cremaster Cycle, but more often the more absurd pieces are short—people just don’t have the attention span to watch hours of incomprehensible content. I remember when I was running a theater company in Atlanta, most plays would be sensible stories, featuring goal-driven protagonists, conflicts, climaxes, and resolutions. But when a show would feature a series of 11-minute plays, all the crazy stuff came out. We can see this on a larger scale with music video. With such a short time scale, directors are free to create something a bit wilder.
This spectrum of meaning in art has a corresponding spectrum of neural processing. It turns out that the kinds of things we like to experience are in a sweet spot between having recognizable patterns and incongruity. Too much of either one is boring. Too much pattern and we feel we have nothing more to get from it, and too much nuttiness and we lose any hope of finding an underlying pattern.
Two famous comic performers in a scene from an absurd play.
TV Critics Tend to Avoid Popular Shows
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| English: Logo for the United States television series ' Deutsch: Logo für die US-fernsehserie Navy CIS: L.A. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
In music, the most popular songs are inescapable, and their artists become national celebrities. In movies, the most popular films are feted in the Monday papers and widely acknowledged, even if they only compete for the special-effects awards in March. But on television, the world of criticism and the world of viewership aren't merely askew; they're mostly on different planets. No self-respecting TV critic writes about NCIS: Los Angeles, ever—ever—even though the all-time most-popular episode of Game of Thrones (which is, itself, the all-time most-popular HBO show) got fewer viewers than an NCIS: LA rerun. As I wrote a few months ago, the most essayed-about show (Girls), most tweeted-about show (Pretty Little Liars), and most buzzed-about show (at the time: House of Cards) sum to half the average audience of NCIS (which is hardly essayed, tweeted, or buzzed about at all).
###
Broadcast TV sells audiences. Premium TV sells a "brand." That's how HBO's Richard Plepler, speaking yesterday at The Atlantic's New York Ideas conference, summed up the difference between what he does and what broadcast television—e.g.: NBC, ABC, CBS, FOX—tries to do. HBO makes all of its money from selling subscriptions (to the HBO channel) and selling shows (e.g. to Amazon and anybody else). Broadcast television, however, has an entirely different business model based overwhelmingly on advertising. Among the broadcasters, ad money follows audience.
###
The writer decides he "bit off more than he can chew" and returned to the piece online to refine his conclusion:
Second, I am not saying that all popular TV is ignored by all TV criticism, a absurd position that would require (for starters) that I read literally all TV journalism on the Internet. My thesis is less dramatic: The economic structure of cable channels, which receive most of their money from fees rather than ads, greatly relieves them of the burden of maximizing audience–and as a result they produce television that is less formulaic, more attractive to the writing-and-reading-about-TV crowd, but often less watched.
Here's a list of the most-popular shows on broadcast TV from the end of last year. Clearly shows like The Good Wife, Scandal, Parenthood, Community, and Parks and Recreation receive a certain amount of media attention these days. But they are far from the most popular shows on broadcast. They rank 27th, 44th, 57th, 123rd, and 111st among primetime series in the 2012-2013 season by viewers. The shows ranked immediately behind them were Survivor: Caramoan, The Middle, Private Practice, Guys With Kids, and 1600 Penn. (How I Met Your Mother, which ended this year to lots of fanfare, finished behind 40 shows among 2013 viewers.) Although they might command high ad rates because of the quality or relative youth of their audience, they are not driving much audience, relative to their competition. So even when we restrict our analysis to just broadcast TV, the most-watched shows aren't the most-written about.
Quick Takes on Oscar Nominees for Best Picture
from Vox
In a year with so much variety, it’s hard to know which film will ultimately come out on top — and that’s part of the fun. Here’s what to expect from each of the Best Picture nominees, and how you can watch them.
In a year with so much variety, it’s hard to know which film will ultimately come out on top — and that’s part of the fun. Here’s what to expect from each of the Best Picture nominees, and how you can watch them.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
You Are Watching Less *Live* TV
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| A shared experience: Family watching television, c. 1958 (Photo credit: Wikipedia). |
Nielsen’s most recent “Total Audience Report” indicates that Americans aged 18-24 watched a weekly average of about 12-and-three-quarter hours of traditional TV during Q2 2017. What does that mean?
It’s now less than 2 hours per day of traditional TV for this young group, the lowest figure yet.
In terms of a year-over-year change, Q2’s figure represents a sizable decline of 2 hour and 25 minutes per week. In other words, 18-24-year-olds as a group went from watching about 2 hours and 10 minutes per day during the second quarter of 2016 to about 1 hour and 49 minutes per day during the second quarter of this year.
The year-over-year decline in traditional TV viewing among the 18-24 population was the largest since Q1 2015.
In sum, between 2012 and 2017, second quarter traditional TV viewing by 18-24-year-olds dropped by almost 10 hours a week, or by roughly 1 hour and 25 minutes per day.
In percentage terms, Q2 traditional TV viewing by 18-24-year-olds was down by a huge 15.7% year-over-year and has now fallen by 43.6% since 2012.
In other words, in the space of 5 years, close to half of this age group’s traditional TV viewing time has migrated to other activities or streaming (more on that to come).
Sunday, February 4, 2018
The Sitcom Formula
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| Maggie Simpson (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Sitcom Code breaks down what needs to happen in each episode, by the minute. As Dan Richter of Demand Media notes, “Sitcoms, minus commercials, are typically 22 minutes long [with] a script of 25-40 pages. Every sitcom episode has a main plot (story A), as well as one or two subplots (stories B and C).” There are three main acts, divided by two commercial breaks (in most American TV), with 3-5 scenes per act. One of the distinguishing characteristics of sitcoms, as opposed to other forms of television, is that the main protagonist(s) barely change from one episode to the next, let alone from season to season (Maggie Simpson has been sucking on a pacifier for nearly thirty years). Therefore whatever happens in the episode, the situation must end largely where it began. The Wise Sloth points out that 22 minutes is “not even really time enough to tell a full story. The whole story has to be on fast-forward,” so simplification is key.
Poet Philip Larkin described all plots as “a beginning, a muddle, and an end,” which is as good a description as any. Each episode begins with the protagonist stating a goal or problem that must be solved, and which we understand will be solved by the end of the episode. If the problem is solved too quickly, then the episode won’t stretch out to 22 minutes, so the first attempt at reaching the goal or solving the problem must fail (“the muddle”), requiring a new approach, before the episode ends and the protagonist either does, or does not, achieve what they set out to do. The goal might be Homer trying to make a fortune by selling recycled grease in The Simpsons, or Job Bluth setting out to sabotage the family’s banana stand in Arrested Development, or the Seinfeld crew looking for where they parked in a vast lot. Another hallmark of sitcoms is that the protagonists frequently fail, and we often want them to, because we do not want our favorite characters to change too much. If Leslie Knope ever left Pawnee for a career as a DC politician, we would be distraught. If Kramer got married and moved to the suburbs—whoa, now!
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