A Couple of Surprising Movies

A Couple of Surprising Movies

I caught the latter 2/3 of a made for TV movie called Homeland Security (2004) and the first fifteen minutes of another movie called Idiocracy (2006).

What surprised me about Homeland Security is how positively it presented a fictionalized account of the events immediately after 9/11, the struggles to create the new Homeland Security Department, and the efforts of military and intelligence personnel to do their jobs. The CIA agents and soldiers in Afghanistan are heroic but plausible characters; so are the FBI agents.

At the same time, there are portrayals of some of the real ugliness that took place after 9/11. Muslims are arrested on suspicion of al-Qaeda association who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Jailers are portrayed doing what a few actually did--mistreated some of those arrested in the first few days after the attacks, when emotions were running strong. The complexity of trying to figure out what dangers were real, and which what were not, while lacking the clock-ticking excitement of 24, is probably more realistic.

My guess is that Homeland Security was intended as a TV series pilot--which would not be a bad idea, considering what a raging success 24 was in the weeks after 9/11. But I am guessing that by 2004, when this was shown on TV, NBC had already figured out that defeating Bush in the interests of gay marriage and abortion was more important than defeating al-Qaeda.

Idiocracy seems to have enjoyed a very, very short theatrical release. It is obviously based on Cyril Kornbluth's 1951 story "The Marching Morons." In that story, a man from the present (well, actually, 1988) is accidentally put into a state of hibernation. When he comes to, in the distant future, because intelligent people have limited their breeding, and stupid people have not, the average IQ has fallen precipitously--and the relatively small number of really intelligent people are trying to keep the system from collapsing.

Kornbluth's story was a well-done cautionary tale, part of a long tradition of concern about the less capable outbreeding the more capable, in the tradition of Malthus, and late 19th century Social Darwinists. Idiocracy actually opens with considerable potential, as it shows us two couples, the first of which is two standard deviations above the norm discussing on camera why they haven't had kids yet...but they will, real soon. Then we see a below average (in this case, about one standard deviation below the norm) intelligence couple who are like something out of a Jerry Springer television show about trailer trash.

Over the next few years, the smart couple keeps making excuses until their marriage falls apart, and she talks about waiting for the right man to come along. The trailer trash are breeding like cockroaches, with an family tree expanding at a prodigious rate (and sometimes, in ways that remind me of the joke that used to be said about Appalachia, where family trees don't branch).

It's not a fair or accurate portrayal of either; this is a comedy, remember. The fact is that a lot of smart people do actually reproduce, and some reproduce quite effectively! At the same time, there are a lot of people of subnormal intelligence who would be hard to distinguish in their morals or tastes from members from many members of the intellectual elite. You can also find some pretty smart people who are profoundly sleazy.

What makes Idiocracy really quite an inspired piece of work is the clever portrayal of the decline of the intelligence of the human race. The scene where a nurse tries to check Sgt. Bauers in at the hospital will make you think of the cash registers at fast food places. But part of how it shows this decline, which is only subtly implied in Kornbluth's story, is by how it portrays the degradation of the language, entertainment, and moral values of the population. As an example, we see the sign of a Fuddrucker's hamburger chain slowly change its letters over the centuries, to something that rhymes, but I won't repeat, and in fact, even on Comedy Central, they fuzzed out of the second part of the sign. The entertainment of the masses in this idiocratic future is crude and vulgar--but think of the most vulgar movie comedies of today, and then aim them down a bit more, and you get the general idea. It's an accurate extrapolation of where our society seems to be heading--but it is necessarily quite vulgar and crude. Kornbluth's story at least had the advantage that it could tell you without showing you:

A glowing sign said: MOOGS! WOULD YOU BUY IT FOR A QUARTER? He didn't know what Moogs was or were; the illustration showed an incredibly proportioned girl, 99.9 percent naked, writhing passionately in animated full color.

I fear that this comment over at IMDB about the movie might be close to the truth of why the movie didn't last in theaters, in spite of having a moderately well-known star in it, Luke Wilson:

I had a disturbing thought about why this movie might have done so poorly in test audiences. I'm trying to say this in a nice PC way, but ... could it be that a lot of people who saw it in test audiences (and a lot of people who might see it on DVD or cable now) might not find the movie funny and/or don't get it might be - shall we say - like the people in the film?

I don't mean so much that they're necessarily that unintelligent in terms of inherent ability. I'm thinking more that maybe in terms of learned behavior they really are that coarse and that crude. So making fun of that kind of behavior really is not entertainment to them.

Take for example, the scene in the beginning where the narrator says that people think it sounds "faggy" when anyone speaks in proper English. Sad to say, I have come in contact with people who upon hearing that would probably say something like, "Yeah ... of course people who talk like that sound faggy. Where's the joke here?"

A frightening thought: we may already be part of the way to the world of "The Marching Morons"--and Idiocracy could have failed for that reason.

Randy Barnett Hates Australia

Randy Barnett Hates Australia

The movie--not the country:

Avoid Australia--not the continent, the movie. To see why, go to this link on Rotten Tomatoes and read all the negative reviews--something I did not do before wasting 3 hours of my life.

I had actually planned on going to see it, but after reading some of the reviews, maybe not. My favorite excerpted negative reviews:

Never boring but often exhausting, Australia finally pulls itself together for an emotionally satisfying ending. Or six. Pass the gravy.

Australia is so damnably eager to please that it feels like being pinned down by a giant overfriendly dingo and having your face licked for about three hours: theoretically endearing but, honestly, kind of gross.

It's an endurance test that ends in moans of recognition as characters seem to be acting out scenes from other, better movies. Really, you don't want to sit through this.

Australia strains to do it all, and finally all you can see is the strain.

[Luhrmann] veers from earnest drama to brisk comedy and then tries to hold it together with awkward voiceover narration. Within five minutes, Australia seems headed for trouble. It gets there and stays there.

Stargate (1994)

Stargate (1994)

I've never watched the TV series--the previews looked rather stupid. But I'm sitting in this room in Bend, Oregon with not much to entertain me. The landlord is somewhat involved in the Central Oregon arts scene, and has a lot of friends in the movie business--and among the films sitting on the shelf, was Stargate.

This was better than I was expecting--quite a bit better than I was expecting. Once you accept the premise of a controllable Einstein-Rosen wormhole technology that allows movement across vast expanses of space, then the rest of it is pretty plausible science fiction--and a nice combination of action film, interesting ideas, and the human fight for dignity.

The Lake House (2006)

The Lake House (2006)

I caught this on Oxygen Channel (which emphasizes that it is aimed at women) and this may be the perfect film for them. It is your basic time travel love story (of which there are many, although Somewhere in Time perhaps the most romantic), but with a new twist, because it doesn't involve time travel per se (except for some materials--this is exposed early enough in the movie that this doesn't really qualify as a spoiler).

What makes this remarkable is not just the romance involved, but how it sticks to the theme of Jane Austen's Persuasion--although it is not in any sense based on that novel--the value of waiting for the person that you really love. This is an astonishing idea in our microwave, instant gratification world. (Admittedly, anyone who wouldn't wait for Sandra Bullock is clearly beyond hope, anyway.)

There are several interesting subplots that provide interest tangents without distracting from what is, after all, a love story. To my surprise and pleasure, there is only the subtle implication of a sexual relationship involving the doctor and her old boyfriend; a very small amount of vulgar language appears to have been edited for broadcast. Within the secular worldview that this film inhabits, it is a powerful message about waiting for the right person--not taking whatever is currently available.

Watch this with someone you love.

August Rush

August Rush

This movie starts in an orphanage. I found myself thinking as it started, “Wouldn’t it be nice if someone made movies that affirmed the potential for people to make something of their lives? Something positive?” And I found myself watching the most moving film that I have seen in many years.

Predictable? Sure. Implausible in many places? Absolutely. Too many coincidences? Beyond any doubt. I will take as many more movies like this as I get.

I don’t want to give it away, so I will tell you that the themes include: The power of a mother’s love. The importance of a family. The need to belong. And how sometimes, something wonderful can come from a mistake. The power of music to move us.

I confess that I am a sentimental person, and this isn’t the first movie that has made me cry. If August Rush doesn’t make you cry with joy, there isn’t a movie that will. This is one of a small number of movies that I have seen on airplane, and found myself saying, “I am going to rent this when I get home, and watch it again.”

24: An Addiction & Ruminations on Torture

24: An Addiction & Ruminations on Torture

There aren't terribly many TV shows that I watch, and generally, they aren't shows on broadcast TV. I'm a big fan of Mythbusters. History Channel and Discovery Channel both have some quite well done shows--and occasionally, some real disappointments.

My impression of History Channel has gone up a bit over the last five years. I used to often find myself watching documentaries on History Channel and finding lots of either minor errors or at least highly arguable interpretations. And not just in my area of specialization. I don't know if I am getting less demanding (not likely), or if they are getting better at what they choose to air. It is still generally fluff, but more accurate fluff than I recall back in 2001.

One of the cable channels was running re-runs of 24 a couple of years back, and I ended up watching parts of seasons three and four--and it was addictive. My wife bought seasons one and two for my birthday, and now we are watching season four.

If you haven't watched the show, there are several aspects that are unique. The format is that every episode covers one hour of a 24 hour day in the life of the Los Angeles office of the fictional Counter Terrorism Unit, as they respond to some crisis. They make some use of multiple screen images so you see stuff that is happening to different characters in disparate locations. The editing (at least of the three seasons that I have seen so far) is absolutely brilliant, and the use of musical score to set mood is outstanding.

There are some aspects of the show that are profoundly depressing and gritty. I would like to think that there is more torture by government agents in 24 than there is in real life, but with what we know of waterboarding at places like Gitmo--maybe it isn't as far off as I would like to think.

What I find powerful about 24's depiction of torture is that I suspect that it at least partly reflects what goes on in the real world--where people on our side do some pretty ugly things to get necessary information about terrorist plans. These are actions that most Americans would not want to know about, because it is horrible--but that are probably sometimes necessary to prevent great losses of life. And by torture, I don't mean playing Christina Aguilar music to prisoners at Gitmo.

While 24 definitely has a good guys/bad guys dichotomy, it also has unpleasant reminders of the dangers of the use of torture. Once you cross the line into accepting the use of abusive techniques for getting information from bad guys, it is possible to make mistakes--sometimes very serious mistakes--about who is a bad guy. Season four has a couple of episodes that confront some of the consequences of getting too relaxed.

This is a show that is pretty tough to watch in places. There are a number of torture sequences that are not terribly graphic, but any reasonably intelligent adult can put two and two together and realize what is implied--and it can be pretty unpleasant to think about.

I would like to think that in the real world, the use of torture against suspected terrorists is rare, limited to suspects who are unquestionably terrorists, and limited to the minimum necessary level of suffering required to accomplish that end. I would also not be surprised if much of the use of torture is in the style of medieval torturers, who often were able to elicit information by merely showing the instruments of torture.

To the extent that well-meaning sorts like John McCain want to make it clear that certain interrogation techniques will never be used by the United States, it creates a situation where this threat will not work. Indeed, putting terrorists on notice that we will not use torture may oddly enough create situations where we may have to actually use torture as part of interrogation. If a terrorist believes that the CIA is utterly precluded from using torture, the threat won't be persuasive; only the actual infliction of suffering will accomplish those ends.

One aspect to 24 that I find frustrating is that much of the technology you see is almost real. Yes, there are an enormous number of traffic cameras and surveillance cameras out there. The full extent of how much America was already under surveillance came out in Timothy McVeigh's trial, when it turned out that there was a surprising amount of video coverage of many events involved in the case.

On the other hand, the vast majority of the surveillance cameras out there simply don't have the resolution to do what we see done. You can't take your average 640x480 video camera output, zoom in 20x on the license plate on a moving car, and really expect to have a crisp, easy to read plate. There are some astonishingly crisp satellite images that are taken by the KH-12 and similar spy satellites, but they are in low orbits that are moving more than four miles per second. They can't take dozens of images of the same location a second or two apart.

Much of the computer and network jargon is also utterly bogus--just close enough to the real thing that it sounds like it might be real, except if you know much about how computer and telecommunications networks actually work. Then it is just laughable! While I'm not current on telephone tracing technology, I'm pretty sure that most of the problems that our intrepid heroes in 24 have with tracing terrorist phone calls is grossly inaccurate. The transition from analog to digital telephone systems has dramatically changed this situation. I worked for a company many years ago that was requested as part of surveillance efforts to add certain capabilities to our switching equipment for law enforcement purposes, and I'm sure by now, trace time is measured not in minutes, but in fractions of a second.

On the human side, 24 has some very strong points, and some very weak points. It shows human behavior at its worst (petty, jealous, pigheaded, greedy) and at its best--such as the willingness of CTU employees to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. Make no mistake about it--America has no shortage of men and women who put themselves in harm's way for our safety, in military service, in law enforcement, and in real world organizations not so different from 24's CTU. Sometimes they are everything we think of as honorable and wonderful; sometimes they are people doing dirty jobs that we don't want to examine too closely. As George Orwell observed, "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

On the downside, there are aspects to 24 that I find silly or unrealistic. Our hero Jack Bauer is too fearless, too resourceful, too strong, too capable. He is not without his faults, but in the real world, no one is that good. In the real world, teams of real people accomplish things that 24's Jack Bauer does all by himself. In the first two seasons, so much of the plot was wrapped around the ability of Bauer's daughter to get herself repeatedly into hazardous situations that I found myself thinking of Snidely Whiplash and Nell tied up on the railroad tracks.

One plot device that 24 overuses involves good people who do wrong things because the bad guys have taken family members hostage. In the real world, especially in the Middle East, this happens a lot. Perhaps if George Soros, the ACLU, and friends get their way, this will become common in America as well. But it isn't realistic now. Most people who work in sensitive occupations, such as law enforcement, work pretty hard to keep their families secure and information about them hard to get.

The other aspect of this that shows 24 is letting dramatic license take over is that almost anyone in counterterrorism work has to know that there will be no fair deals made. If someone takes your family hostage, the chances that they will be allowed to go free--with information that might lead to a later capture and conviction of the hostage takers--is about zero.

There is one other aspect of the show that bothers me a lot. The second season--which was filmed after 9/11 but before the invasion of Iraq--had a premise involving European and American businessmen helping terrorists to set off a nuclear weapon in the U.S. to provoke a war in the Middle East--in order to drive up oil prices. It is so Michael Moore. There are other subplots in season three that also have evil businessmen involved as well. While there are Americans who have become involved with terrorist activities, here and abroad, they have, to my knowledge, always been driven by their religion, and never by greed. This bothers me, because it tends to blur what is the core of the terrorist threat that the U.S. faces.

On the plus side, 24 doesn't pretend that our enemies are Russians, or Norwegians, or Jews. (Although season one, filmed before 9/11, involves Serbians, and season three is largely built around Mexican drug lords.) While not heavy handed, seasons two and four are clearly Middle Eastern Muslim fanatics, some of whom are sleeper cells.

Ratatouille

My wife and I went to see this early this afternoon with our daughter and son-in-law, and we can wholeheartedly endorse this as a fine family film. It was funny, it was cleverly written, very well done computer graphics mixed with (I think) occasional actual film. There was no double entendre, no off-color references, no profanities, a few mild surprises along the way. Unlike Shrek 2, which profoundly disappointed me with its transgenderism and unnecessarily raw language, Ratatouille was a gem of a family film--a reminder that a G-rated film can be something that adults can enjoy as much as the kids.

If you want to see more movies like this made: vote with your dollars. Run right and see it.

UPDATE: A reader tells me that in the credits is a statement that they used no motion capture techniques--which would suggest that they didn't use any real photography, either. If so--even more impressive technically!

This Film Is Not Yet Rated

One of the cable channels that runs oddball documentaries had one about the MPAA's rating system with the title above. Now, I'm not entirely happy with MPAA's rating system. I've seen movies rated PG-13 for violence that seemed completely indistinguishable from other movies rated PG for violence. Roger Ebert's review of Hannibal (2001) makes a very trenchant observation about the utter inability of a movie to get an NC-17 rating for violence, no matter how gross and gratuitous, and Ebert's obvious revulsion at it:

Many still alive will recall when a movie like this could not be contemplated, let alone filmed and released. So great is our sophistication that we giggle when earlier generations would have retched. The brain-eating scene is "special effects," the face-eating is shot in deep shadow and so quickly cut that you barely see the dogs having their dinner, and Julianne Moore explains in interviews that the story is a fable of good and evil (although she cautions that she "actually talked to my shrink about it").

The MPAA rating system also isn't very consistent--and after Shrek 2's transgendered trashiness, I am convinced that the rating system is utterly defective for figuring out what films are appropriate for small children.

I share the apparent concern of the filmmaker that unrealistic violence is given too low of a rating compared to realistic violence. I am concerned that at least some kids may fall into the "violence is a video game" attitude when nothing too terribly serious results from guns blazing everywhere. But there is a real danger that regular exposure to very graphic, very detailed violence may have a desensitizing effect as well.

This may not make some people happy, but I think that even relatively graphic portrayals of a couple making love (as distinguished from having sex) is far less corrosive to the 8-17 set than the repeated portrayal of extremely graphic violence--or even the repeated portrayal of unrealistic violence. But of course, Hollywood has far too much interest in something kinky, something perverse, something degrading (almost always to women), and what seems to make Hollywood happiest of all--something that combines sex and violence.

The more I watched of This Film Is Not Yet Rated, however, the more disturbed I became with the apparent major concern of the filmmaker and many of the people they interviewed, including a self-described First Amendment lawyer--that the MPAA rating system is a form of "censorship." It is nothing of the sort. Censorship is a governmental imposition, either through prior restraint or, in a rather indirect way, through punishment after the fact. The First Amendment has nothing to do with a purely private body like the MPAA. To my knowledge, even state laws that regulate what materials may be shown or sold to minors do not use the MPAA rating, but rather have rather specific definitions of what is prohibited.

As near as I can tell, the big objection--the big point of this documentary--was that the MPAA's rating system, which is from my perspective way too loose for anyone raising kids to make good decisions, is blocking the access of filmmakers to American culture. What?

If you don't want your film to have an MPAA rating, it isn't required. There are lots of art houses that will run it. If the MPAA gives it an NC-17 rating, this will limit your ability to get into a lot of theaters around the country. My only reaction is: "So?" Movies made in the 1940s and 1950s managed to address some rather significant and serious topics by the use of subtle writing. For example, the sequence in Spartacus where the slave's new master talks about how some people prefer oysters, and some prefer clams--and some prefer both--and immediately thereafter, the slave played by Tony Curtis runs away to join the slave revolt.

I'm sure that the vast majority of young people that saw Spartacus when it came out didn't get the implication of that discussion--and that's okay. There comes a moment when you can understand this, and if you don't? No big loss. But it is a reminder that even with the standards that the MPAA operated under back then, it was possible to write serious works without being graphic.

Ditto for Casablanca. There's not a bit of dialog that tells you how intimate the relationship was between Rick and Ilsa back in Paris, but the smoldering looks that Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman exchange tell you that they had gotten a bit beyond holding hands--without hammering the audience over the head about it. Subtlety--a concept that could be reintroduced into filmmaking, without the MPAA's nasty ratings monopoly being any real obstacle to the business.

Movies I've Seen Recently

Shining Through (1992) with Melanie Griffith and Michael Douglas. It's a World War II spy movie (which you learn at the very beginning, so I'm not giving anything away). It was better than I was expecting. There's a bit too much modernity that creeps into a lot of movies about this period, and maybe Melanie Griffith's character is a bit too aggressive for the normal female of that time--but other than that flaw, it's a pretty entertaining, almost plausible story.

I guess part of why I found it interesting is that I worked with a guy many years ago who worked for OSS during World War II, and went into Germany. The tale he told emphasized how well he was trained and equipped (right down to authentic-looking German laundry marks on his underwear)--and not him at all. That was one of the reasons that I was prepared to believe him. People that make up stories like that usually make themselves, their courage, or their intelligence the center of the story. This guy was quite the opposite.

I, Robot is a bit more recent--one of those movies that I was mildly interested in seeing, but never got around to it. The title comes from an Isaac Asimov story, and the Three Laws of Robotics come from Asimov's robotic short stories, but the rest of the story doesn't seem to come from any Asimov story that I recall. It is, in most respects, too sophisticated and thoughtful.

I don't want to spoil the plot, but if you saw the previews you know that Will Smith plays a police homicide detective a few years in the future investigating a murder--and one perhaps committed by a robot. The rest of the story is what I imagine a Macintosh fanatic with paranoia might construct if he found out Microsoft was going into the robot business.

There is a surprisingly thoughtful set of questions posed by the movie about what constitutes a soul, free will vs. determinism, the importance of keeping the population armed, the dangers of concentrations of power, and when a single company becomes too dominant on the economy. (Sorry, Microsofties!) It also has so many twists and turns that I kept changing my mind about who the bad guy was right up to the last few minutes.

Will Smith being in it, there are a couple of subtle Christian messages scattered in the movie. At least the version that I saw on cable television was astonishingly clean. There are a few very, very subtle double entendres that small kids won't catch--just about as clean as a movie as gets made anymore that isn't animated. There is a bit of violence in it, but nothing terribly detailed or gross, since most of the violence involves robots, and robots don't bleed.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Will Smith's new movie (and the misspelling is for a reason) managed to even get my cynical son wildly happy. This is one of the most heart-warming--yet grittily realistic movies that I have seen in a very long time. The story is simple: it is about a young father, struggling to make ends meet in 1981 San Francisco, who responds to adversity with courage, determination, and a positive attitude.

This a period piece, and since I actually spent some time in San Francisco in 1981, and moved to the Bay Area in 1982, there were so many little details that caught my eye and said, "Someone put the effort into getting this right." The Berkeley Farms milk cartons. The cars on the streets. The (in retrospect) ridiculous fashions.

This is based on a true story, of a young man who starts from hard times, and works his way up the ladder as a stockbroker, and in that respect alone, it makes it atypical of most people in such difficult circumstances. Of course, many people in difficult circumstances start to whine about the unfairness of the world, instead of recognizing what the hero does--that when Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he wisely wrote about the right to "the pursuit of happiness"--not necessarily the right to actually reach it. Our hero gets through difficult times because at his core, his values say that in America, you can go as fast and far as your wits and ambition will carry you.

There are parts of the film that are the weird blending of reality and fiction that are inevitable in such a story. Our hero doesn't end up at a no-name stockbroker, but Dean Witter. When he looks for shelter for his son and himself for the night, he ends up at Glide Memorial Church--and it appears that the Rev. Cecil Williams is playing himself.

Rev. Williams is one of those characters that drives me a bit crazy. His theology and politics were a constant source of frustration to me when I lived in the Bay Area, but Glide Memorial was certainly very active in its efforts to alleviate suffering among the poor and homeless of San Francisco in those days, and I presume that nothing has changed since then. Of course, Williams and Glide Memorial were also intimately tied (along with most of the rest of the San Francisco political establishment) with the Rev. Jim Jones and Peoples Temple. (See also here, and here, and here.)

There is one, and only one brief moment of language you can't use on television--and I am a little mystified why it is here, unless it is to get the rating up to PG-13, since anything less makes a movie unwatchable by teenagers.

UPDATE: Here's a newspaper account of the real story. In some ways, it is more dramatic than the movie, in some ways a bit less so.

A Really Touching Film

I don't watch a lot of movies on television (who has time?) but my wife is miserably sick with some sort of upper respiratory infection at the moment, and we were curled up in front of the idiot box when The Human Stain came on one of the cable channels. We missed the first few minutes of it, but from reading reviews of the movie when it came out, I was able to piece together what happened.

I'm not going to tell you what the secrets are that are revealed--but I will tell you that it is a film about tragedies and secrets, and how the sins of one person and one time perpetuate into the future. Anthony Hopkins plays a college professor at the end of his career and life; Wentworth Miller plays him as a young man, hiding what was, in 1944, a terrible secret--today, it would be something to celebrate, not to hide. Nicole Kidman plays his girl friend, with an even more terrible secret from her past, and an ongoing disaster (played by Ed Harris). To give some idea of the skill of the actors involved, Gary Sinise delivers, as usual, an excellent performance--and it pales in comparision to Hopkins, Miller, Kidman, and Harris.

Anyone that can watch this movie and not be powerfully moved is has a heart of stone. Perhaps it because I have known too many people who've been through some of these tragedies.

It was edited for cable, so some of the stronger language was skillfully redubbed with euphemisms, and there might be a bit more of Nicole Kidman revealed in the theatrical release than we saw. This is definitely an adult film, meaning that much of what we learn about these tragedies is not suited to pre-teens, and perhaps some early teenagers. (They are likely to be bored by it anyway.)

Pirates of the Carribbean: Dead Man's Chest


I saw this a few days ago. I had very high hopes, because I so much enjoyed the first movie in the series with its mixture of clever dialog, interesting story, entertainingly amusing physical action, and Johnny Depp's "I'm not taking this too seriously, and neither should you" sly grin. As an historian, I was pleased to see a few nods to the actual situation of the British possessions. Look at a lot of older pirate movies--there are no blacks in them at all.

As I mentioned three years ago:

There are some pretty awesome special effects, but unlike certain other recent films, they didn't spend so much money on them that they needed to fire the scriptwriters.

Alas, that does not seem to be case with Dead Man's Chest. They clearly spent a lot more money on special effects--as well as making a full-sized pirate vessel (built on a modern frame)--and a lot less on the witty, often intentionally anachronistic dialog of the first movie. I laughed far less.

There are a few fight sequences in Dead Man's Chest that remind you of the great sequence in the blacksmith's shop in the first movie--but not enough to carry a film this long. I never found the first movie dragging; this one felt like it could have lost 20 minutes, and it would have been the better for it. I fear that once the director paid the very sizeable upfront costs to design some of these special effects, he figured, "Hey, it's only another million dollars to put in a few more minutes of this sea creature!"

The first movie, once you accepted its one supernatural premise, was consistent, and logical. I never find myself saying, "How does that work?" Dead Man's Chest has a couple of supernatural premises, but there were clearly a few explanations that never get made--or perhaps the voodoo priestess's accent was just too thick for me to catch it. What, exactly, is packing a certain piece of meat in dirt going to do? I didn't understand, and it bothered me.

The first movie was a bit dark, and I observed at the time that it probably wasn't suitable for most children under 10 because of the macabre aspects of the pirate ship's crew. I think this is even more true for Dead Man's Chest, which has an even more disturbing dead ship's crew. The cannibal sequence is played for laughs, and certain aspects of this might be a bit too disturbing for the very young.

By the way, after the credits, there is a brief gag clip. It isn't bloopers--but it does explain what happens to the dog!

United 93

Well, I finally went to see it tonight. I've linked to Roger Ebert's review of it before, and I find myself in agreement on every detail. It was technically perfect--the combination of handheld camera and grainy film gives a cinema verite character that makes you feel like you are on the plane. For the first minutes, the jerkiness felt uncomfortable, but soon, you don't notice it--but the tension builds as it approaches the awful climax, because you know there is no surprise here. There will be no happy ending, just a heroic one.

There's no flashbacks, or backstory to the characters; in fact, you don't learn the names of any of them, and in most cases, you don't know why they are on the plane. The pieces of dialog that we know about from reading books such as Lisa Beamer's Let's Roll! and from reading the 9/11 Commission Report--are just there. They are not highlighted--just like you were there. We hear Todd Beamer praying with an operator; we hear him say, "Let's roll." But if you aren't paying attention--just as in real life--you'll miss it.

There isn't a single recognizable actor in this film--and it is astonishing what happens when you take away "star power," and instead of seeing some famous actor, who you've seen in a dozen movies, with all the baggage that he carries from those other roles--you just see...someone who was on an airplane, an ordinary person, who fought back in the first battle of World War III.

I've seen it suggested that much of the dialog was improvised. It might well have been; it certainly sounds like the way ordinary people speak--not lines that a screenwriter might create to make us sympathetic, or sorrowful, but the way the real people involved might have spoken.

FAA; the military; the chain of command: they are all trying--and failing. There was clearly no preparation for something like this. Our air defense system was set up for external attack. FAA was not prepared for a hijacking of this type, because there had been no hijacking in at least a decade, and a hijacking like this was simply beyond their imagination. It shouldn't have been, considering that we had sufficient precedent, but in much the same way that militaries usually prepare to fight the last war, our government agencies were prepared to deal with problems that were already familiar.

My wife wouldn't go see United 93; she's a very sensitive soul, and was afraid that it would be too emotionally devastating. It is powerful, but in an understated way. There is blood, but the brutality of the hijackers killing pilots and passengers is more suggested by the quickness of motion than detailed gore. The language is a little raw in places, as you might expect under the circumstances, as military officers and air traffic controllers try to make sense out of isolated facts, and then desperately try to prevent what they believe will be an airliner crash in Washington DC.

This movie doesn't pull any punches. It opens with the hijackers shaving their bodies in ritual purification, and praying for Allah's protection as they prepare to commit mass murder.

This is a war of civilizations. There is no room for negotiation. Islamofascism needs to be completely and utterly destroyed, both in the death of its adherents, and in the humiliation of a political theory that asserts it has a moral superiority that justifies being in complete control of the entire world.

How Can I Offend You? Let Me Count The Ways

I knew that the musical Rent had homosexual characters, but I assumed that they were cleaned up Will and Grace homosexuals--the kind that really do exist--but that seem to be more common in television and movies than in real life. (This assumes, of course, that living in the San Francisco Bay Area qualifies as "real life.") Rent was a real surprise. Not a pleasant one, either.

I've never been a big fan of musicals. Perhaps it is because the conceit of an art form that pretends that ordinary people will break into perfect song as part of emotionally powerful dramat (or comedy) just overstretches my credulity. I enjoyed The Sound of Music, but I confess, there aren't many musicals that don't leave me sitting there wondering, "Why bother?" We rented Rent because my wife is going to be teaching a class about the history of drama, and she wanted to see what modern stage productions there might be to have students watch and discuss. I don't think so.

Rent is one of those reminders that you can invest a lot of talent in writing music and lyrics, find some very talented actors to sing those songs--and still end up with a depressing and unpleasant product. Rent is about a bunch of people dying of AIDS, many of them homosexual, and all of them unpleasantly full of themselves, feeling sorry for themselves, and in general, behaving like the sort of irresponsible and immature bunch that I have long associated with being an artiste.

The lyrics to "La Vie de Boheme," one of the high energy numbers, are here. It is rather as though the lyrcists was trying to see how many different ways to offend the majority of Americans.

Blast From The Past

I really thought this movie might be worth seeing when it came out, but one thing led to another, and I didn't see until just now. It isn't a perfect movie, but its flaws are so minor....

If I tell you the premise, it won't give anything away; the coming attractions for it were clear enough. Brendan Fraser stars as Adam Webber, born in 1962 at the heights of the Cuban Missle Crisis. An implausible set of events causes Adam's father and very pregnant mother to go into their extraordinary fallout shelter, and a plane crash on their house causes them to think that World War III has started. Adam is born shortly thereafter--and every stays in the shelter for 35 years. The reasons for this are bad science, but this isn't a science fiction movie--it's an entertaining examination of the way that our popular culture has changed, and for the worse, since that time.

Brendan Fraser is one of my favorite comic actors--in George of the Jungle he managed this same wide-eyed, cow in the headlights character--so innocent, sweet, and decent that he simply can't understand anything else. As Adam Webber, being raised by his brilliant scientist father, he is an exaggeration of 1950s middle class values. When Dad goes back to the surface in modern America, he sees the graffiti, the violence, the styles, the adult bookstores, and assumes that the radiation caused a race of mutants to take over--and Adam has to go out on a shopping trip.

I can barely remember the late 1950s, but in some senses, the cultural values of our society in that time survived into the late 1960s--a time that I remember well. I would have to call 1968 the period when everything clearly started down the toilet. By contrasting Adam Webber's exaggerated middle class values with the present, it reminds of what we have lost.

The language is generally pretty clean--and the only mildly offensive langugage is there to show Adam's disappointment. There's a gay character, but he's the rather morally scrubbed sort of gay guy that seems to be present more in movies than in real life. I do recommend it.

UPDATE: One of my gay readers asked me what I meant by "morally scrubbed." I mean that he isn't the sort who stands naked on top of a float in gay pride parades and... does things.

Proof That Middle School Students Write Screenplays

And not even particularly bright middle school students.

I am going to rant and rave about how incredibly bad Sci-Fi Channel's original movies are. I'm ranting and raving because I am tremendously resentful that someone pays people to make movies that are not only this dumb--but don't even have the saving grace of appealing to a mass audience. I have no experience writing screenplays, but I know that I could do a better job than this.

Warning: spoilers for a very bad movie; some detailed descriptions of some gruesome scenes in this incredibly bad movie.

One of these days, the Sci-Fi Channel is going to have a movie made for it that will be worth watching. So far, I am absolutely astonished at how tremendously bad these efforts are. I was bored out of my wits this evening, so I watched Pterodactyl, which was made this year. Tragically, this is right up there with half a dozen other Sci-Fi originals in how bad it is--right down there with Plan Nine From Outer Space, but lacking the camp.

Look, I'm not a stickler for accurate science in a sci-fi movie. I'm not even demanding that Sci-Fi original movies be consistent in their bad science. I am not demanding that they have good special effects--the original Star Trek series had terrible special effects, but because the stories were often thought-provoking, and sometimes showed some real human drama, I could ignore that.

I would just like the screenplays to be written by someone with some knowledge of:

1. Adults.

2. Real people, instead of juvenilely written stereotypes.

3. A sufficient knowledge of geology to laugh at the stupid volcano matte.

Pterodactyl starts out with all these hopeless stereotypes. There is the Earnest Professor of Paleontology--just good looking enough to make you think of Sam Neill in Jurassic Park--but because he is a Serious Scientist, he is only interested in objects that are millions of years old. Serious Scientists have no romantic or erotic attraction to the opposite sex--and certainly not to the beautiful and smart woman who is....

The Pretty Female Grad Student--but not a bombshell, and unlike the other females, she doesn't dress sexy or even attractively because then she wouldn't be a "serious" scientist in training. After many years of working for Earnest Professor, she finally gets across to him at the start of their fossil hunting trip that she would like their relationship to be unprofessional--and of course, being an Earnest Professor, he could never think of such a thing (but of course, this changes by the end of the movie).

There is the Big Bosomed Blonde Bombshell Undergrad Airhead (think Clueless but without the humor). She is completely and utterly useless, and her knowledge of paleontology is down below the Special Ops soldiers we meet later in the film. And you ask yourself, why has Earnest Professor brought not only undergraduates from the United States to help on this dig in Turkey--but an undergraduate who knows effectively nothing about paleontology?

There is Nerdy Undergrad Guy--whose dress, glasses, and mannerisms bring to mind Revenge of the Nerds--but it isn't funny. He's what a middle schooler would stereotype the smart kids at his school as--when they grow up.

Big Bosomed Blonde Bombshell, of course, has to strip off her shirt and shorts to go for a swim--by herself, in a lake in a country that she doesn't even know. (A Muslim country at that, where her swimsuit would probably get her either arrested, or raped.)

Earnest Professor is carrying a revolver on this expedition. While I appreciate that at least the screenwriters didn't feel the need to throw in anti-gun propaganda, do they really think that Earnest Professor was able to fly into Turkey with a handgun, and not have it confiscated?

The Special Ops guys are just a bit too stereotyped as well--right down to the female member of the team (yeah, right!) who seems to have spent too much time modeling herself on the very macho female Colonial Marine in the movie Aliens. But of course, since the movie was made by middle schoolers, she has a body that would shame a Vegas showgirl, and even olive drab can't hide it.

The Special Ops guys get involved early on with killing pterodactyls (after Big Bosomed Blonde Bombshell gets picked up and dismembered). But unlike real Special Ops, they can't seem to call in air support or even helicopter evacuation because of the "sensitivity" of the mission. They are arresting what seems to be a thuggish terrorist leader at the request of the Turkish government--but they can't call in air support for fear of offending...who? The Turkish government?

Pterodactyls are definitely a bit big to bring down with .223 and handgun ammunition--although Earnest Professor is blazing away repeatedly with that revolver. I think we see him reload once--and even then, this guy must be carrying ten or fifteen speedloaders. His shooting is remarkably accurate for someone who isn't aiming the gun--not even slightly.

Of course, real soldiers would have at least a few rifle/grenade launcher combos, and a grenade would solve the pterodactyl problem quite well, and perhaps open the plot up to some more subtle or interesting problem. So...no grenades. Instead, the soldiers have this bizarre rocket launcher that you aim by putting on the virtual reality helmet, look at the target, and then fire--and the tracking system makes the rocket fly in loops, go around mountains, etc. before finally reaching and hitting old Leatherlips. But of course, they don't have very many of these wondrous rockets. This way, our screenwriters can figure out how to create tension.

There's a lot of blood spurting, especially when the pterodactyls take someone's head, and leave either the body, or grab just the upper part of the body, leaving everything from the waist down. Now remember: the people are just standing there--and the swooping pterodacytl grabs the head or upper body, and the body just breaks apart. This can't happen. It is grossly unrealistic (along with very gross). Realism can be disgusting, but this isn't even realism.

Later we see one of the soldiers who has been grabbed and taken back to the pterodactyl's nest to feed the babies. He's been there, injured, and subject to baby pterodactyl ripping for at least 30 minutes, maybe more. They have ripped his abdomen and chest open, and they are pulling out organs to feed upon--and he is conscious, and expressing some discomfort. Not only was this an unnecessary scene, but it was utterly impossible.

At this point (or perhaps several paragraphs back), you are probably asking yourself, "Why does Clayton watch such bad movies, and why does he care so much?" For one simple reason: someone is actually being paid to write screenplays this bad, and someone else is actually being paid to make movies this bad. I know that I can do a better job.

I think that almost anyone who has spent more than a few months with adults could do a better job of creating real characters--not stereotypes. You don't have to know a great deal about our military to see the glaring holes in this film's weaponry. Anyone with any knowledge of guns would see the incredible flaws in Earnest Professor's handgun use--as well as his apparently unlimited supply of ammunition that he is carrying around.

Pterodactyl is, in my experience, pretty representative of Sci-Fi Channel's original movies. I would hope that films of this tremendously low caliber indicate nepotism at work. The alternative is that someone at Sci-Fi Channel just blows money for no particular reason.