500 Million Friends (or The American Dream)

"Involuntarily I glanced seaward - and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far way, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness." -F. Scott Fitgerald

             The Social Network is easily the critical darling of the year. Everyone talks about the technical genius, the screwball paced dialogue, and the performances, but an examination of the film's relationship to the audience has been largely lacking. I believe that the film's true genius lies in the way it updates "The American Dream" to the modern era. Everyday we see self-made millionaires like Zuckerberg and celebrities with no more claim to fame than being friends with Paris Hilton (or being Paris Hilton for that matter) and we have almost no choice but to think about how it could be us -- suddenly rich for some simple idea or for who we know. That may be "The American Dream" but it isn't "The American Story". That story can be seen everywhere, from works of art like Citizen Kane to real life melodrama like William Randolph Hearst's censorship of that same film. The American Story is broken dreams and the corruption of ideals and no film has better shown it recently than The Social Network.

"I'll see you in my dreams" Essential 5: David Lynch

  "My movies are film-paintings - moving portraits captured on celluloid. I'll layer that with sound to create a unique mood -- like if the Mona Lisa opened her mouth, and there would be a wind, and she'd turn back and smile. It would be strange and beautiful." - David Lynch

David Lynch is the rare artist capable of making the non-rational… digestible… maybe even understandable, and even if we can’t articulate that understanding, we can approximate it. Discussion inevitably turns to the darkness inside us all or the hidden face of seemingly idyllic communities. He often visualizes the fractured psyche, perhaps as a metaphor for society, or individuals, or even himself. Machines are a common motif, often juxtaposed with less ordered, organic imagery like physical deformities, fire, and waterfalls. All of this is true of Lynch, but beside the point. Few film authors are so visual, and none are quite so focused on evoking instead of explaining. Critics love to over-analyze Lynch, and I’m no exception.

For me at least, watching Lynch is like being under a spell. I’m mesmerized by the images, the story, and most of all by what it’s doing to me. Intellectual exercise is generally strenuous, and requires a great deal of conscious thought. With Lynch, though, you feel as if it is your subconscious getting the work-out. After I am done I feel as if I understand myself better or perhaps that I am more comfortable with myself in a way that is impossible to describe. Is intellectualism possible if it eludes your consciousness?

           

I’m going to resist the urge to delve deeper into the state Lynch puts me in. Nothing is more boring than someone else psychoanalyzing themselves. So, here are the essential films of David Lynch. His films taken together create a rich interconnected body of work that is best considered together. But you have to start somewhere and inevitably some make easier entrance points than others. If you are interested in this (very) important filmmaker I recommend starting here:

The Art of Criticism 6: Art and Objectivity

 ...All the same, if you say you dislike "The Godfather" or "Shawshank," I can't say you're wrong. The one thing you can never be wrong about is your own opinion. It's when you start giving your reasons that you lay yourself open. Many years ago there was a critic in Chicago who said "The Valachi Papers" was a better film than "The Godfather." "Phil," I told him, "film criticism is a matter of subjective opinion. Only rarely does it stray into objective fact. When you said 'The Valachi Papers' was better than 'The Godfather,' that was an error of objective fact." -Roger Ebert

All the recent bellyaching about Inception has again led many to criticize those reviewers who gave the film a negative review. This, of course, has opened up a whole can of worms about the value of the film reviewer (often incorrectly equated with a critic), of having dissenting opinions, and what qualifies as a valid opinion. Roger Ebert gives a nice little defense of his profession (above). Yet, I can't help feeling as if he's dancing around the solutions. He's certainly right when he states, "film criticism is a matter of subjective opinion." The problem though is when he tries to bring objectivity into the equation. Briefly, objectivity is "mind-independent" or free from any judgments made by an entity. This excludes Science, Religion, Literature, Film, etc, etc. The only things it doesn't necessarily exclude are Mathematics and Philosophy, the only fields where actual "discoveries" are made (not "inventions"). Basically, I point this out in reference to Ebert's quote from above, "only rarely does it stray into objective fact." What exactly is an "objective fact" and how is it different from a fact (and what does this have to do with anything?)? I'll tell you:

"Man... is above all the plaything of his memory. "

Inception is easily the most divisive film of the year thus far (and lets face it, that's because its the only film released thus far that has both artistic intentions and box-office returns). I have a strong aversion to writing reviews, particularly in this sort of maelstrom, but I feel that I have to extract some thoughts (Harry Potter style!) and put them in my own personal pensieve. Before I get into the two specific things about the film I want to talk about, I suppose I should give my general thoughts on the film so you at least know where I'm coming from. Basically, I enjoyed it... which can be interpreted as I think it was cool, but not half as smart as it pretended to be.

The Death of Cuteness (and a Bonus!) Essential 5: Pushing Daisies

Cuteness is perhaps most commonly seen, in the world of film and television, as something to be grown out of. The sickly sweet ending is akin to picking your nose and overtly sentimental dialogue to using a sippy cup. There seemed to be a brief moment, though, when all this was starting to change. The early years of this decade saw Wes Anderson at the height of his powers, Amelie at near Pulp Fiction levels in college dorm rooms, not to mention the near rabid fanbase of "Gilmore Girls." So what happened? Amelie's reputation has never been lower, Wes Anderson's films (while still well-respected) have been making less and less money at the box office, and shows like "Wonderfalls" and "Pushing Daisies" can't bring in any viewers.

The Glee Monster Revisisted

Glee is everywhere, its music is among the bestselling anywhere and the show's ratings have never been higher. While I have ranted against it previously (and plan to do some more of it in a bit), I do genuinely respect one aspect of it's conception, and that is the bravery and sheer balls it took to make it a musical. The strength of musicals has always been that they are able to simply and directly convey the inner thoughts of a character, that which is so easy to describe on page but so difficult on stage and on film. Musicals have long been an interest of mine; I count some of them as all-time favorites (Singin' in the Rain, Love Songs, and  Top Hat), and a great many others as disappointments... should have beens.

Essential 5: Angel

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was so successful that Joss Whedon was able to expand the universe with a spin-off show. That show, Angel, replaced much of the campy teenage vibe with dark fantasy. He killed off main characters, added moral ambiguity, and in the process created a show which added to the so-called "Buffyverse," yet is also capable of standing on it's own merits. I would actually argue that season 5 of Angel is as good as any single season of Buffy.

A Twin Peaks Corollary

Twin Peaks is almost certainly my favorite show and besides that it's one of the most important ever produced, opening the way for prime-time strangeness (of a lesser degree) from shows like The X-Files and the recently finished Lost. I usually tackle my favorite shows on this site with my "Essential 5" series (basically an excuse to exercise my love of lists), and although I could come up with the five most important episodes of the series pretty easily, they wouldn't make any sense out of the context. The denseness of its mythology is staggering. Its practically the anti-Tarantino, drawing us to images within the work instead of to references out of it (not to say it doesn't do that too). So all I can do is recommend that the series should be watched from the beginning (the Pilot, leave the movie Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me till after the series finale) and offer up some oddities and references that help understand the show.

The Art of Criticism 5: The Written Word vs. The Moving Image

I think it's very possible that this last decade will come to be viewed as one of the most important in the development of the branch of the arts that includes movies, television, and youtube videos among others. That isn't to say that youtube is the equivalent of the printing press or that "The Wire" is the equivalent of Hamlet but its pretty undeniable that a huge leap forward has been taken. While for centuries the written word has been widely respected for its artistic merit in all sorts of forms (from a novel to a short story, and prose to poetry), the movies have dominated all discussion of artistry in the moving images. It is quickly becoming undeniable that movies, television, and short form video all constitute one of the most important art forms today. Vadim Rizov, in his recent blog entry "Why we need better television criticism", argues that because television has been seen as film's unimportant cousin for so long there are hardly any reputable television critics (not to mention the time commitment to watch all the important shows of the past as well as the present). Yet, television is becoming increasingly important and Rizov is onto something with his call for better criticism in that field.

Godard on Trailers

Movie trailers, in today's internet centric movie climate, have almost replaced movies. Needless to say, this is a sorry state of affairs and I am a textbook example of the problem. Trailers can, at best, give you a sense of the plot, atmosphere, and visuals of a film. At worst they can make a good movie look bad and make a bad movie look good. Its certainly not the most reliable way to judge a movie's potential quality. More reliable measures include sticking with known artists (generally directors) of a certain level of skill and reading reviews. Sure, there's the easy argument that in a country where more than 650 movies are released each year, deciding what to see in your limited time is the most important and most difficult part of being serious about movies, and one of the best ways to decide is to watch trailers. The first part of that is pretty undeniable, not seeing everything you'd like to is par for the course. The second part, though, is a serious fallacy that seems solid when its floating around, unexamined, in the subconscious but has all sorts of problems when its really examined. Plus, watching trailers is, at first, quality control but quickly devolves into being a substitute for the movie (to be fair, this is sometimes warranted -- take the trailer for Letters to Juliet which IS the movie). So, it seems particularly fitting that the latest Jean-Luc Godard trailer IS his latest film, sped up to fit into about 4 minutes. The Coen brothers hinted at this sort of irreverence with the trailer to their last film, A Serious Man, but didn't quite reach the heights of this latest bit of genius from one of the great film artists: