Best specialized robot name ever: Gynoid

I feel a little guilty talking about this movie right now. It's a little like going to class without having fully digested the previous night's reading assignment. Sure, you read it through fairly deeply. You take notes. Maybe you had a midnight BS session with your roommate or the kid down the hall.

But maybe you were a little tired; maybe you were a little drunk. For whatever reason, you worry you might have missed something important.

That's more or less Ghost in the Shell 2's 100 minute running time in a ghostshell. It doesn't help that the dialogue is in subtitles (the way it should be) and the animation is some of the most beautiful I've seen since . . . ever. Your eyes pull double duty, straining to digest polysyllabic words stacked 10 deep while soaking up animation of unrivaled scope and grandeur. Beauty and the Beast has nothing on this.

It's a much more assured and revelatory work than it's 1995 predecessor.

Credit Mamoru Oshii with improving upon every facet of an already intelligent and fascinating premise. Yes. Everything is better.

Much of the first Ghost in the Shell felt like a fleshing out of the various philosophical topics woven into the game of Artificial Intelligence. It was about debunking the line of demarcation between man and machine. It was about finding something unique in humanity amidst the clamour of our technological near-future. Oshii was struggling with this right alongside his characters, and it showed in a somewhat lackluster visual presentation, a jumbled thesis, and a messy ending. The plot itself, a techno-noir murder mystery, felt tacked on. Still, the original Ghost in the Shell was something to behold.

In the 9 years that have passed though, Oshii definitely did his homework. In a time when everyone needs a kickass firewall for that lumpy grey mass between their ears, knowledge is immediately available to all, and the section nine detectives Batou and Matoko use all the net has to offer in contemplating their place in the vast, jacked-in world they inhabit.

They drop anecdotes about Descartes, quote Confuscious, the Old Testament, reference Rabbi Judah Low ben Bezalel and the Golem of Prague. They quote Milton. I studied English literature and I can't quote Milton.

But then, maybe it takes someone like Milton, someone with sympathy for the devil, to live as a human in a world where men are ever more becoming mechanized, and the machines they build take on the characteristics of their creators.

Maybe it took Oshii a few years slogging through the quagmire of western skepticism and self-doubt to realize that.

The plot this time--another nod to noir--is more focused and accessible, except for the beginning of the third act, when someone hacks Matou's brain. Things get a little fuzzy then, but they're supposed to.

I don't believe the philosophy involved can totally reveal itself in one sitting. Certainly, trying to flesh it out here would be pointless and boring. Suffice it to say that in Oshii's future, humanity has angst to spare and it looks like things are only getting worse.

Even the animation choices reflect a feeling of alienation, and shows such painstaking love on the part of Oshii. The movie is dominated by advanced computer graphics and lush matte paintings for its backgrounds and many of the dolls (see also: robots, see also: gynoids, see also: sexroids etc, etc). Cars, library Stacks, great post-apocalyptic landscapes are by turns vivid and dingy and exploding with detail. They burst off the screen. Batou and Matoko and the rest of the humans (as well as the gynoids who have been given ghosts [souls]), in contrast, are cell animated the old fashioned way. In this environment they seem helplessly two dimensional, out of place and almost inferior--which is just the way they actually feel. And when a gynoid, through pursed lips and with seductive langour, pleads "help me," the hackles on your neck are at full attention. Brilliant.

I took notes during this movie. I felt compelled to. I think I'm going to find some pop-culture doctoral program and write my thesis on it. The depth and breadth and sheer complexity of the imagery and symbolism in Ghost in the Shell 2 is crippling. It feels at times like Heart of Darkness, but is careful to remain far less turgid and depressing. It fully warrants a second or third viewing, to mine the depth of what Oshii is offering.

At a time when the vast majority of films--even arthouse flicks--opt for allegorical poverty rather than alienate potential ticket sales, it's all the more refreshing to see a beautiful, self-assured movie that's content to do more talking--about Milton for godsake--than shooting.

"If our Gods and our hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then let us admit it must be said that our love is scientific as well."

Read the full thing here.

Vile Young Things

When a first time screen writer and director sets about adapting a book by a beloved author, what does he think about? Creating a psychological tone of narration? Giving features, voices and attitudes to characters that had previously existed independently in the mind of each reader? Maybe.

Maybe he just really didn't want to blow his first writing/directing gig. He wanted a good omen. He needed a good name. Maybe he thought Evelyn Waugh's cutting Vile Bodies was too drab, too glass-half-empty. Maybe he wanted to set a lighter tone.

Why else would he take the novel's original title--which no doubt hints at Waugh's intended tone and moral--and water it down to something as limp as Bright Young Things?

The change is indicative of a series of stylistic and content choices that castrate potentially biting social satire into a bland period piece. Sure it's funny and cutting at times, but in a blithely sentimental way that obfuscates any condemnation of the characters and their cagey morals. As there's an ultimately happy[ish] ending, there can be no lamenting this particular lost generation. Theirs was excess without consequences.

Worst of all, though, it takes no pains to draw connections between Britain in the 30's and the world at large today--connections which are blindingly obvious.

It's Britain on the eve of World War II, a generation of young idle rich are doing the Gatsby from London to Dover and back. The press is having a field day. I don't know much about the history of journalism, but this era might mark the realization that celebrities and scandal tend to sell more newspapers than real news does. Bright Young Things is funny sometimes and painless almost always. Wackiness and orgies happen, then bombs drop, then everyone goes home happy. Somewhere, in the background, someone does a shot of Absinthe.

The parallels to 21st century America are blatant. For two years now millions of Americans have added to their waistlines watching Magnate's daughter Paris Hilton and her Top-40-spawned cohort travel around the country flirting with rednecks and chasing greased hogs.

Similar things exist in England, where reality TV was pretty much [re]invented and where celebrity worship there has reached the level of art form.

As it is, you could remove the actors from their starched collars and bowler hats, swaddle them in distressed denim, trucker hats and feathered boas, and you'd basically have an MTV beach party. Then give Jim Broadbent a pair of timbs and an afro just for my amusement. "What's all this," He'd ask.

If Arthur Miller could make resounding connections between the Salem of the 1690's and the Hollywood of the 1950's, then surely Fry could have taken the pains to underscore the obvious connections between the Bright Young Things and the MTV Generation. He doesn't.

He chooses instead to gloss over the deep and crippling moral and social constraints his characters live in. He deliberately and repeatedly balks at exploring vital and immediate topics like personal freedom.

Miles is a main character. Miles is also gay. Being gay in Edwardian England is a high crime. Miles' lover leaves some scandalous letters lying about. The police get ahold of them somewhere near the climax of the picture. Miles says he must leave England. Miles is never mentioned again.

In Steven Fry's Bright Young Things, characters like Miles are used as anecdotal filler, and are tossed off whenever he feels the need to reaquire the original plot--a trite comedy of errors involving a 1000 pound bet on a stakes race by a novelist you never care much about because he never really loses. Somewhere, in the background, someone does a shot of Absinthe.

All of this is supposed to mean something, it's all supposed to cohere into something about fast and pointless existence. Maybe Waugh's Vile Bodies does, but Fry's Bright Young Things definitely doesn't.

Weightless sound and occasionally funny fury

Read the full thing here.

Not "this year's" anything really

I finally saw Garden State, four months after I missed it at the Seattle International Film Festival, and probably a month and a half after its semi-wide release.

The result was something like the emotional upswell experienced by Zach Braff look-a-like and Garden State protagonist Andrew Largeman. He stops taking his pills. He usually takes lots of them. The pills he takes are prescribed to cure problems with his brain. He says they make him numb.

Amid the grass-roots, indie-fan love-fest this movie has enjoyed, numb is exactly what I was going for. Read no reviews, watch no trailers, wait it out, see the movie when it comes was my mantra. It was a hard pill, for the deluge was near-complete--I could brook no shelter. I was beset on all sides by surging, phantasmogoric buzz. Somehow I kept it at bay.

Sitting in the theatre was like surfacing from immersion in that sea.

Half-drowned and shivering, the movie unfolded itself with quirky characters and ham-fisted dialogue. Things happened that made me laugh. Things happened that made me groan. Things happened that made my capacity for suspension of disbelief nearly overheat from stress. Throughout, In the back of my mind was the one quote that had somehow evaded my filter and slipped in my buzz cortex. It now plagued me. Garden State is "this year's Lost in Translation."

It's not that at all actually. The poignancy of Lost in Translation was in its silent moments. It was the shared glances, ,the longing, the uncertainty on the faces of its characters that fueled the emotional payload that connected Sofia Coppola's dissertation on loneliness with audiences. Braff's face twitches so much you don't know what emotion he's going for--he might be trying for all of them at once, I really can't tell. Natalie Portman's character has epilepsy, which she plays like a severe case of ADHD. Tears flow and you're unsure where they've just come from.

The movie is funny. But the laughs are a completely unconnected series of kitschy sight gags and drug references. It sometimes feels as though the plot exists to suspend these things in a logical order. That's a shame.

A friend and I once had a conversation about Lost in Translation. He didn't like it because he said it offered up a problem without having the courage to put forth a solution. He's a smart guy and that's an excellent point. Coppola's movie was, though, complete and coherent.

Garden State is coherent certainly, but far from emotionally complete. It offers solutions to the existential, drug-addled dementia of its characters. The solutions though, are hackneyed and tired. It's a new gloss on the love conquers all motif. In forwarding that cause, the sometimes snappy, inventive dialogue becomes laughable, the plot sputters, the actors don't seem to know what to do with themselves.

It's a fun movie, but also kind of an unfortunate one.

Read the full thing here.

The growth of words

Last year sometime I read a book by Michael Chabon. It had won the Pulitzer, and despite my waning respect for that award, I picked up The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay expecting good things. I believe a book can't be all bad if it is at least partly about Comics.

It was, in fact, a phenomenal book. In Chabon's deft and confidently long-winded sentences, I saw what my writing might be like if I was better at doing it. It sparked for the first time a real desire to get better at writing. I wanted to work to those heights.

This weekend, while taking my friends on a tour of Seattle area book and other media stores, I came face to face with more of Chabon's work. This was a used book store, so the selection was sparse. There was a copy each of books I hadn't read, and one of the covers had Michael Douglas' self-satisfied and rheumy gaze in extreme close up. I love the movie version of Wonder Boys, but hate editions of books that have anywhere on them "Now a major motion picture from [X]" or pictures of actors. This forces real human faces into the mental space used to create the characters internally. This destroys the process of discovering a book for me.

I also like my book collection to feel timeless.

So I chose The Mysteries of Pittsburgh. Chabon wrote it when he was 24. It reads like it. It has the same over-long sentences, but with almost none of the confidence I admired in Kavalier and Clay. He overwrites, forces hackneyed metaphors, struggles with narrative voice. He wastes sentences. He says dumb things, silly things. He struggles with the odd nostalgia some young men have after a first or second real love. This is a nostalgia I have and hate.

It's also a beautiful and real story I would be finishing off right now if I didn't have to pack for a trip to Boston.

It reminds me that all the literary conceits in the world are no match for characters you can care about and an accessible story. It lets me know that great authors were once insecure authors.

There are millions of insecure authors though, and most never get published. The difference, I think, is courage.

Chabon's Mysteries is a book about exactly that. Not courage in the characters themselves, who retreat into various forms of self-destruction and conformity. The courage is in the writing itself, in fleshing out ideas onto paper, and figuring out how to order them thoughtfully. It feels like a very painful autobiography. There is an internal conflict that surfaces later in Kavalier and Clay (there were also hints in Wonder Boys) over sexuality, ethnicity and identity. Where, in Kavalier and Clay, Chabon is able to affect a certain distance from his subject(s), Mysteries feels gutwrenchingly close and real. Maybe that's the difference between being 24 and being 40ish, I don't know. It makes me think though, that out of a style and temperament I hate in myself now, might one day come something admirable, something to be proud of.

From the bubbling praise on the book's jacket, I realized--maybe for the first time--that perfection in writing and crafting taut imagery is secondary to telling a passionate and enthralling story.

I think I've been preoccupied with the former for too long. I've been analyzing my own writing through the lens of well-practiced and confident wordsmiths and I think, missed much of the point of writing. Maybe that confidence comes with time. Maybe it won't come at all, but I think I need to stop worrying so much about it.

I also watched, after much anticipation and laziness, Garden State, and I can say unequivocally, it is most definitely NOT "this year's Lost in Translation." I'll probably complain about that tomorrow.

Have you heard the Shins? . . . They'll change your life

Read the full thing here.

'A dysfunction of our politics'

Who is this democracy representing? There's a certain ban that's about to expire. Don't click that link yet, just think about this for a second. If there is a piece of legislation on something, it doesn't matter what it is, that has "widespread popular support" and that the President said he would ostensibly support if it crossed his desk, shouldn't that ban be pushed? Shouldn't it be renewed? Don't representative democracies function on the assumption that if the people want something, their representatives fight for it?

Now I'll tell you that it is "supported by at least two-thirds of Americans." A supermajority of people support this bill, why would it flounder? Why would law makers let it expire?

It is, I feel, a lack of concern for the desires, opinions and fears of their constituents.

There are, of course, the patently political reasons. Fear of backlash:

Democrats are well aware that they lost control of the House of Representatives in 1994, the year President Bill Clinton signed the original legislation

excuses:

Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, dismissed the ban as "a feel-good piece of legislation"

and the utter lack of touch with popular opinion:

"I think the will of the American people is consistent with letting it expire, so it will expire," Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee

Which Americans again? I think he means the 33% who have amongst their ranks the NRA, a gun lobby that is categorically against any kind of gun restrictions whatsoever. This particular ban is on assault weapons by the way. These are weapons that have no purpose besides tactical use against humans.

I'm tempted to go on a tyrade about how these weapons are useless in mundane, non-murder scenarios like target shooting, skeet, and hunting, but that really has nothing to do with this.

Representative democracy is failing right now, it's caving to special interest groups who, because of the money they dump into campaigns every cycle, are able to exert an absurd amount of influence and undermine the integrity of our legislative system.

I'm so mad I can't think of anything funny or ironic to go along with this.

Read the full thing here.

Farce imitating [political] life

Being part the second of an informal (x)-part blog suggesting movies to watch if you are sick to death of the current race for President of the United States.

If The Candidate shows us the archetypal slide to center that is necessary to hold major public office in America, Being There gives us the archetypal centrist candidate himself.

Peter Sellers is perfect as Chance the Gardener, a true "blank slate candidate" and just what the country needs. He has no political opinions, no divisive viewpoints. He never argues. Just the opposite: he compulsively agrees with everyone. He also compulsively watches television, mimicking the movements of the actors.

He let's you call him by any name you want.

Chance has the IQ of a toddler, the wardrobe of a prohibition-era millionaire and the stunning good looks of a movie star.

He's a fantastic listener.

His speech is deliberate, direct and focused, but is so absurd and single-minded that, in any context, his words are easily interpreted to be the pontifications of a profoundly elliptical political and economic guru. He's Nostradamus meets George Stephanopolous.

Chance the Gardener (Chauncey Gardiner): As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden . . . In a garden, growth has its season. There is spring and summer, but there is also fall and winter. And then spring and summer again...
The President: (staring at Chance) ...Spring and summer... (confused) Yes, I see...Fall and winter. (smiles at Chance) Yes, indeed.
.
.
.
The President (at news conference): To quote Mr. Gardiner, a most intuitive man, 'As long as the roots of industry remain firmly planted in the national soil, the economic prospects are un-doubtedly sunny.'

Of particular import to this year's election, Chauncey's total lack of a past is instantly seen as an asset.

Dudley: But what do we know of the man? Nothing! We have no inkling of his past!
Nelson: Correct, and that is an asset. A man's past can cripple him, his background turns into a swamp and invites scrutiny.
Caldwell: ...Up to this time, he hasn't said anything that could be used against him.

Chauncey is liked wherever he goes, as he is a perfect and unassuming vessel for people's narcissism. His words are your words--your words become his. He is always and perfectly the person you need him to be. He is even able--in a scene that had me cackling and dry-heaving at the same time--to facilitate Eva's (Shirley MacLaine) self-gratification by just being with her in the room (channel-surfing late night TV).

The only people who see him for what he really is aren't nearly self-possessed enough to have the power to expose him. Even if they did, I wonder if anyone would care.

Chauncey Gardiner: He's exactly what this arrogant country--and your arrogant party--needs [wants].

An' it's for sure a White man's world in America . . . Had no brains at all, was stuffed with rice puddin' between the ears! Short-changed by the Lord and dumb as a jackass an' look at him now!

Read the full thing here.

The problem with politicians

Being part the First of an informal (x)-part blog suggesting movies to watch if you are sick to death of the current race for President of the United States. Derived from conversation on a very good blog.

I watched a fascinating movie last night. It gave me, I think, an new insight into the whole problem with politics in America (I believe this is a problem inherent in any two-party political system).

Essentially, it fosters uninteresting candidates and forces them--if they want any chance of winning--to sell out their ideals and pander to people who are opposed to them ideologically.

People make a big deal of Kerry's waffles--the entire world has. Bush has waffled more than a few times himself (of course these sites are partisan, but at least they cite their sources). Waffling is a matter of course in American politics.

But is this a weakness in candidates, or a weakness in system? It’s probably a little of the former, but I think the idea that this is a systemic problem is far more to the point, and much more worrisome.

The fantastic movie I watched last night was called The Candidate. It features Robert Redford looking hotter than ever, with mutton chops you just want to smother in applesauce and eat right off his face. It was made in the seventies, but it speaks clearly to what is happening this election cycle. It touches so perfectly on the questions I’ve been asking about these presidential candidates that watching it felt fateful--I'd totally forgotten it was in my Netflix queue.

It's about an idealistic young lawyer, Bill McKay, who gets roped into fighting an absurdly popular incumbent for senator of California. McKay has name recognition thanks to a father he’s ideologically opposed to, and that’s about it. He wins the primary going away because all the Democrats with clout are afraid to face their Republican opponent. As a candidate, McKay is a train wreck, unclear on certain issues, completely lacking views on others. However, there is strength in him. He possesses a fierce idealism and is under the assumption that this campaign is his to lose. Think of Al Sharpton’'s quadrennial primary failures. —McKay sees himself as that kind of candidate: There to force dialogue on uncomfortable issues.

Long story short, after the primaries he's a forty-point underdog to Crocker Jarmon (best. . . antagonist name . . . ever), but begins making up ground fast, not because his social-democrat platform is reaching disenfranchised people, but because his campaign handlers are fantastic at splicing his views into digestible sound bytes that are palatable to moderates and even Republicans. The less clear his stances on issues, the more he resonates with people.

McKay doesn’t like this at first, but as the gap between he and Jarmon closes, he tolerates it and eventually gets caught up. There’s a wonderful moment where he’s given the support of a union leader who is guilty of caving to business and breaking a small strike of farmers. McKay's hate for this man is palpable

Union guy: “I think you’ll find we have more in common—“
McKay: “I don’t think we have shit in common.”

Here, Redford looks like a feral dog. The room, full of various advisors to McKay, is silent for about 15 seconds. Then the men erupt in laughter, even the union boss. Finally McKay smiles too, because he doesn’t seem to know what else to do.

The next scene shows the boss introducing McKay as “the next Senator from the great state of California.”

The campaign is no longer McKay’s, it's no longer anyone's really.

The movie was strangely anticlimactic and more powerful for it. Redford'’s last lines lingered with me for hours. With the campaign over, the once confident and self-assured candidate turns to his manager and says, “"Marvin? Marvin, what do we do now?”"

The statement is simple, but profound.

When there are only two choices, the inevitable winner is not the person who electrifies the most people to his/her cause; it’'s not the candidate who convinces people he/she will push for change. The winner is the person who convinces the most people he/she’s just like them. You do that by saying as little as possible.

I found the movie fantastic at chronicling the swift movement toward center that all candidates (those that want to really win anyway) have to make in order to succeed in a two party system.

I'm sure someone is going to disagree with me on this. Bring it.

Mad plays the bass like the race card.

Read the full thing here.