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Monday, March 23, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Carma
I have not been sleeping well of late. The other night I laid awake in bed for the same amount of time I lay there sleeping (3 hours for each, in case you're wondering). Last night I managed to get a full 7 hours of sleep, which is actually a bit more than average for me. However, I've still been floating through the day with my head somewhere else.
After lunch I get out of my car and realize that I'm forgetting something. So I search my pockets and come up empty of headphones. I look into my car and it dawns on me that my regular headphone are in my messenger bag. Which I left at my apartment when I was there for lunch. Crap. Well, maybe I have another set laying about on the back seat or something. So I fumble for my keys. And that's when I realize that those keys are what I was trying to find when I patted down my pockets.
My father ends up rushing over, from not too far away, with my spare set to get my keys back from the ignition. I told him he didn't need to rush since I'd be at work for hours but he wanted to get it over with. As he walks out of the office a co-worker comes in asking if anyone can spare a few minutes to help jump his car. And I leap at the chance. I don't buy into fate or karma or anything like that but just the fact that I suddenly have the ability to get into my car and he needs help to start his- It had a nice symmetry. I think it's more of a pay it forward feeling or possibly the greedy concept of hoping someone will snap up the chance to help me again some day, but I instantly got up without any hesitation and jumped his car. I was happy to be able to get into my car to start up his and I hope down the road I'll get help when I need it. And it wasn't that hard to do.
It wasn't a life changing moment. It wasn't any kind of epiphany or awakening or gnostic breakthrough. It just felt really nice that mere seconds after my father rushed to help me after I simply asked I could do the same for someone else.
And that was my moment of carma for the day.
After lunch I get out of my car and realize that I'm forgetting something. So I search my pockets and come up empty of headphones. I look into my car and it dawns on me that my regular headphone are in my messenger bag. Which I left at my apartment when I was there for lunch. Crap. Well, maybe I have another set laying about on the back seat or something. So I fumble for my keys. And that's when I realize that those keys are what I was trying to find when I patted down my pockets.
My father ends up rushing over, from not too far away, with my spare set to get my keys back from the ignition. I told him he didn't need to rush since I'd be at work for hours but he wanted to get it over with. As he walks out of the office a co-worker comes in asking if anyone can spare a few minutes to help jump his car. And I leap at the chance. I don't buy into fate or karma or anything like that but just the fact that I suddenly have the ability to get into my car and he needs help to start his- It had a nice symmetry. I think it's more of a pay it forward feeling or possibly the greedy concept of hoping someone will snap up the chance to help me again some day, but I instantly got up without any hesitation and jumped his car. I was happy to be able to get into my car to start up his and I hope down the road I'll get help when I need it. And it wasn't that hard to do.
It wasn't a life changing moment. It wasn't any kind of epiphany or awakening or gnostic breakthrough. It just felt really nice that mere seconds after my father rushed to help me after I simply asked I could do the same for someone else.
And that was my moment of carma for the day.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Watchmen review
Watchmen is a mixed bag in terms of quality. After seeing it it's not really possible to flat out say it's a good or bad movie. It's a movie made of polarizing aspects that don't mesh very well. There are good parts and there are bad parts. I'd go so far as to say that there are great parts and god awful parts. In the end it is worth watching but it certainly is not as good as it could or should have been.
I'll start on the good parts so as not to sound like a complete malcontent. There are some really great performances in Watchmen. Jeffery Morgan delivers exactly what you'd expect from the Comedian. He's cruel and abrasive and never hateful. He comes across as a psychopathic Taoist; always acknowledging the worst in humanity and himself without judging it. Jackie Haley is a fine Rorschach despite being a bit too old for the role. I've heard it mentioned that he sounds a bit like Bale's Batman at the end of Dark Knight but has anyone read Watchmen since it was published decades earlier and not heard that voice? Patrick Wilson's Night Owl (II) is the human thread that holds this whole soup of a movie together. The scene where he fails to perform sexually and then stands naked in front of his old costume is the single moment when this movie starts to feel like it has something to offer viewers that they can't get elsewhere. That feeling wavers and at times vanishes, but I'll get into that later. On the opposite side of the human equation is Doctor Manhattan. His looks are spot on but Billy Crudup's voice is much higher than I would have expected Manhattan to be cast with. It turns out to be stroke of brilliance. While his actions still keep him increasingly aloof and withdrawn from the human race his voice keeps him grounded and believable. Since his is a cosmic force with knowledge of both the future and the past unless drawn out it seems hard to swallow but Crudup has a softness that makes it work.
Who doesn't? Malin Akerman has less range in her acting than an amateur David Duchovney. In scenes when she's supposed to be disgusted and shocked she stretches her craft and reaches a blandly annoyed place. At best she's forgettable scene dressing and at worst she is a walking mood killer in a tight latex suit. Matthew Good's Adrien Viedt is also a terrible addition to the cast. He starts out with a light southern lilt that is a bit reminiscent of Brad Pitt. As the film goes on he begins to whisper his lines as if he's trying to seduce the sound editors. Then he gets bored with that and cycles through various vague European accents. I realize that he's British and might suck at accents but why does that make him sound like a Die Hard villain by the end of Watchmen. That odd "is he German" accent that inevitable looses against Bruce Willis: he has it and it makes no sense. Not only that, but between his hair and choice in clothing he comes across as the brilliant third of the Night at the Roxbury dancers.
Visually the design of Watchmen is great. If you sit down with the book right after the movie and compare scenes you will find that there are probably details you saw on screen that escaped your notice when reading the book. An example I can give is that when Dan Dreiberg (Night Owl II) and Laurie Jupiter (Silk Specter II) get into an alleyway brawl I was thrown when Dreiberg snaps one of the gang member's arms. Well, upon rereading the book he does indeed break a man's arm in that scene. The details and background characters are absolutely stunning. And that's part of the problem as well. If one has not read the book it is hard to imagine that they will get the full payoff that Snyder expects them to when focusing on seeming random details at points. There is a part where the camera lingers on a young comic book reader and a newspaper vendor that will seem out of place unless you know how big a role they play in the book. There's also a scene at the end involving a small copy shop called The New Frontiersman that is not set up or explained, leading to a possibly hazy moment that is crucial to understanding the end of the story. Another visual weak spot is the aging makeup. Judging by how Nixon ages it seems that his nose simply gets longer and more cartoonish. The Comedian barely gets older while his contemporary The Silk Specter ages at an alarming pace. The moral of this story seems to be the harder you live the younger you look.
So now I come to the part where I can freely discuss what fails miserably. Let me start with the music selection. Many scenes open with or are punctuated with an incredibly obvious song while all on screen sounds drops away. There's a muted funeral with "The Sound of Silence" played over it. When shown a character who wants to control the world you might hear Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World". The opening credits show snapshots that illustrate how the Watchmen time line differs from ours while Dylan croons "The Times They Are A'Changing". Nearly every song played is too obvious a choice and played in too obvious a manner. The one that really bothers my is the "Ride of the Valkyries" played as Doctor Manhattan and The Comedian torch Vietnamese troops. While I understand that this is a heavy-handed nod to Apocalypse Now it completely bastardizes that same song as used in the book, where it takes on a depressing connotation rather than an invigorating one.
Zach Snyder's slow motion fetish also interferes with the film in many parts. While he has stated that he does it to emulate the framing of moments in comic book panels it gets beyond distracting. Nearly every fight scene seems to be half slow motion, leading me to believe that had he kept those shots in real time his 3 and a half hour directors cut could have clocked in under 2 hours. Instead of feeling like a comic frame it seems that Snyder simply wants to show how pretty his movie is. There's no subtlety or restraint in any of his directorial choices. Every bit of blood that appears it the book is highlighted and some new ones are cooked up just to compensate for the fact that he has absolutely failed at capturing a gritty 1985 NYC. That's right, there's absolutely no sense of time this (technically) period piece. 1960s music and TV play overhead and on screen and while a lot of this movie is in historical flashback this rule holds just as true for the 1980s scenes. How can an 80s movie have the same soundtrack as Forrest Gump?
The end result is that this movie is still enjoyable, despite its flaws and director. The artistic design, Moore's story and characters, and most of the performances carry the whole film. It could have been better. It could have been worse. Was Zach Snyder a good choice? It's hard to know. Most directors would have tried to put a much more personal touch on the project rather than defaulting to the source material for almost every single frame. If the director makes good choices then it improves the film version. Bad choices and, well, you get it. I suppose all we know is that Snyder is a bad director who's smart enough not to try too hard creatively. If that sounds like a back-handed complement... that's because it is. But on the bright side Watchmen is not a bad movie and Snyder can still take credit for that.
Rating:
On a scale from -5 to 5 Watchmen ranks +2.
I'll start on the good parts so as not to sound like a complete malcontent. There are some really great performances in Watchmen. Jeffery Morgan delivers exactly what you'd expect from the Comedian. He's cruel and abrasive and never hateful. He comes across as a psychopathic Taoist; always acknowledging the worst in humanity and himself without judging it. Jackie Haley is a fine Rorschach despite being a bit too old for the role. I've heard it mentioned that he sounds a bit like Bale's Batman at the end of Dark Knight but has anyone read Watchmen since it was published decades earlier and not heard that voice? Patrick Wilson's Night Owl (II) is the human thread that holds this whole soup of a movie together. The scene where he fails to perform sexually and then stands naked in front of his old costume is the single moment when this movie starts to feel like it has something to offer viewers that they can't get elsewhere. That feeling wavers and at times vanishes, but I'll get into that later. On the opposite side of the human equation is Doctor Manhattan. His looks are spot on but Billy Crudup's voice is much higher than I would have expected Manhattan to be cast with. It turns out to be stroke of brilliance. While his actions still keep him increasingly aloof and withdrawn from the human race his voice keeps him grounded and believable. Since his is a cosmic force with knowledge of both the future and the past unless drawn out it seems hard to swallow but Crudup has a softness that makes it work.
Who doesn't? Malin Akerman has less range in her acting than an amateur David Duchovney. In scenes when she's supposed to be disgusted and shocked she stretches her craft and reaches a blandly annoyed place. At best she's forgettable scene dressing and at worst she is a walking mood killer in a tight latex suit. Matthew Good's Adrien Viedt is also a terrible addition to the cast. He starts out with a light southern lilt that is a bit reminiscent of Brad Pitt. As the film goes on he begins to whisper his lines as if he's trying to seduce the sound editors. Then he gets bored with that and cycles through various vague European accents. I realize that he's British and might suck at accents but why does that make him sound like a Die Hard villain by the end of Watchmen. That odd "is he German" accent that inevitable looses against Bruce Willis: he has it and it makes no sense. Not only that, but between his hair and choice in clothing he comes across as the brilliant third of the Night at the Roxbury dancers.
Visually the design of Watchmen is great. If you sit down with the book right after the movie and compare scenes you will find that there are probably details you saw on screen that escaped your notice when reading the book. An example I can give is that when Dan Dreiberg (Night Owl II) and Laurie Jupiter (Silk Specter II) get into an alleyway brawl I was thrown when Dreiberg snaps one of the gang member's arms. Well, upon rereading the book he does indeed break a man's arm in that scene. The details and background characters are absolutely stunning. And that's part of the problem as well. If one has not read the book it is hard to imagine that they will get the full payoff that Snyder expects them to when focusing on seeming random details at points. There is a part where the camera lingers on a young comic book reader and a newspaper vendor that will seem out of place unless you know how big a role they play in the book. There's also a scene at the end involving a small copy shop called The New Frontiersman that is not set up or explained, leading to a possibly hazy moment that is crucial to understanding the end of the story. Another visual weak spot is the aging makeup. Judging by how Nixon ages it seems that his nose simply gets longer and more cartoonish. The Comedian barely gets older while his contemporary The Silk Specter ages at an alarming pace. The moral of this story seems to be the harder you live the younger you look.
So now I come to the part where I can freely discuss what fails miserably. Let me start with the music selection. Many scenes open with or are punctuated with an incredibly obvious song while all on screen sounds drops away. There's a muted funeral with "The Sound of Silence" played over it. When shown a character who wants to control the world you might hear Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World". The opening credits show snapshots that illustrate how the Watchmen time line differs from ours while Dylan croons "The Times They Are A'Changing". Nearly every song played is too obvious a choice and played in too obvious a manner. The one that really bothers my is the "Ride of the Valkyries" played as Doctor Manhattan and The Comedian torch Vietnamese troops. While I understand that this is a heavy-handed nod to Apocalypse Now it completely bastardizes that same song as used in the book, where it takes on a depressing connotation rather than an invigorating one.
Zach Snyder's slow motion fetish also interferes with the film in many parts. While he has stated that he does it to emulate the framing of moments in comic book panels it gets beyond distracting. Nearly every fight scene seems to be half slow motion, leading me to believe that had he kept those shots in real time his 3 and a half hour directors cut could have clocked in under 2 hours. Instead of feeling like a comic frame it seems that Snyder simply wants to show how pretty his movie is. There's no subtlety or restraint in any of his directorial choices. Every bit of blood that appears it the book is highlighted and some new ones are cooked up just to compensate for the fact that he has absolutely failed at capturing a gritty 1985 NYC. That's right, there's absolutely no sense of time this (technically) period piece. 1960s music and TV play overhead and on screen and while a lot of this movie is in historical flashback this rule holds just as true for the 1980s scenes. How can an 80s movie have the same soundtrack as Forrest Gump?
The end result is that this movie is still enjoyable, despite its flaws and director. The artistic design, Moore's story and characters, and most of the performances carry the whole film. It could have been better. It could have been worse. Was Zach Snyder a good choice? It's hard to know. Most directors would have tried to put a much more personal touch on the project rather than defaulting to the source material for almost every single frame. If the director makes good choices then it improves the film version. Bad choices and, well, you get it. I suppose all we know is that Snyder is a bad director who's smart enough not to try too hard creatively. If that sounds like a back-handed complement... that's because it is. But on the bright side Watchmen is not a bad movie and Snyder can still take credit for that.
Rating:
On a scale from -5 to 5 Watchmen ranks +2.
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