By Bob Clark
I often find myself somewhat at odds with myself as a game-designer and cineaste, especially whenever critics disparage works in the latter medium with comparisons to the former. Whether it’s due to over-reliance on artificially generated imagery or character so thinly portrayed they seem to be nothing but ciphers for audience projection, hearing a movie being called “video game-like” bristles me personally, saddened to hear the language of one passion being used to disparage an object from another. At the same time, as a designer I often find myself comparing games to cinema unfavorably whenever they spend too much devoted to non-interactive cut-scenes rather than actual playthrough time. When you spend more time watching a video-game than actually engaging with it, calling out its movie-qualities can be a legitimate criticism, just as early silent-cinema could be overly reliant on theatrical or textual qualities in less than capable hands. Yet there’s always an amount of cross-pollination between cultural artifacts of different creative forms, and as new digital media have risen up in prominence and sophistication, it’s only been a matter of time before we started to see younger artists in the dominant expressive forum (cinema) begin to invoke the tropes and themes from the new kid on the block (video games) in earnest, beyond the empty criticism. Edgar Wright’s latest film, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, is a prime example—a movie-musical pretending to be a comic-book pretending to be a video-game.
Based on Bryan Lee O’Malley’s manga-like graphic novel series following the adventures of a young Canadian hipster on the indie-rock scene in his quest to woo the lovely Ramona Flowers and vanquish her seven ex-lovers, who stand in his way like boss-battles from old Super Nintendo games, it poses a mixture of cinematic technique and cross-media disciplines that makes old episodes of the Adam West Batman series and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City adaptation look positively quaint by comparison. Life-bars and combo-markers pop-up in the physical realm of the film like the Ikea-catalogue living-room sequence from Fight Club, offering a heads-up display of character stats during moments as ordinary as hitting the bathroom. Fight-sequences are presented along the mis-en-scene of anime and Street Fighter II-style fighting games, illustrating long strings of punches one by one in which beaten opponents literally explode into piles of quarters. The aspect-ratio shrinks from 1.85:1 to 2.35:1 at the drop of a hat, with split-screens galore that recall anime in style (or Western animation pretending to be anime, like Gendy Tartakovsky’s overrated Samurai Jack). Time itself expands and contracts on mere whims, telescoping long sequences into blink-and-you-miss-them scene transitions that evoke the feeling of the Wachowski Brothers’ Speed Racer in spirit, if not in appearance, creating a dreamlike, stream-of-consciousness editing style that at times appeals to the associative storytelling of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie evoked by more than the snowy swing-sets and distant love-interests with amazing Technicolor hairdos. Even the music recalls classic melodies from the NES era, with recognizable themes from The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy games needledropped onto the soundtrack and game-reference band names like Sex Bob-ombs and Clash at Demonhead mentioned throughout.
As such, in structure and technique, it represents one of the clearest and most potent combinations of both cinematic and gaming cultures at a key generational crossroad with an audience full of both kids and young adults all young enough to be in on the joke, a demographic to which I easily belong. Why, then, do I hate it so much? Maybe it’s thanks to Edgar Wright’s superficial treatment of the material, a continuance of his similarly popular, but shallow collaborations with Simon Pegg on the Romero-esque Shaun of the Dead and the cop-thriller-in-a-small-town comedy Hot Fuzz. Like those films, Scott Pilgrim doesn’t so much mine all the pop-cultural artifacts of comics and gaming for meaningful generational insight so much as it provides a baseline of promptings for canned laughter in the audience (one imagines he probably would’ve been on the short-list of directors for a parody-movie of Miami Vice if Michael Mann hadn’t beaten everyone to the punchline). His ironic, self-conscious direction often wastes great opportunities during action sequences that might’ve made for great fights if they weren’t covered solely for shots that looked cool, without necessarily being coherent in-scene, or choreographed mainly to provide humorously awkward moments rather than actually impressive stuntwork. It helps turn most of the movie’s fights into an awkward mix of music-video editing and choppy coverage focused less on the internal logic of each fight and more on its isolated money-shots or joke-moments, which is especially disappointing during potentially cool moments like a showdown with a Hollywood star’s team of stunt-fighters (which happens off-screen), a battle with a literal Vegan superman (which ends with a lamely predictable coffee gag) and a climactic pixilated-lightsaber duel (which is so sloppily executed it makes the laser-ring face-off from Mel Brooks’ Spaceballs look like the Duel of the Fates by comparison).
It also doesn’t help that most of the film’s characters are intentionally presented as too-cool-for-school douches all but drowning in their own hyper self-awareness (the dialogue is so jam-packed with redundant pop-cultural references, it sounds as though it were mid-wived by Kevin Smith, Joss Whedon and Quentin Tarantino in their script-doctor phases). Michael Cera has treaded this hipster-rich territory before in the Diablo Cody penned travesty Juno and Nick and Norah’s Ultimate Playlist (which might’ve been acceptable had it been the murder-mystery it might sound like to viewers of TCM), and he fares about as well as might be expected as the narcissistic lovelorn twit with an 8-bit chiptune on his shoulder. Mary Elizabeth Winstead does about as much as her one-note tough cookie-cutter role as Ramona Flowers allows, but neither she nor Cera manage to divest enough genuine spark into their characters to make either of them believable as lonely souls who’d manage to be attractive to anyone, let alone one another or the baker’s dozen of broken-hearted men and women between the two. Supporting performers like Kieran Culkin and Jason Schwartzman (who plays big-bad Gideon Graves like his Rushmore geek grown up to become a Bond villain) manage to at least play their unlikable roles with a winning, shit-eating grin panache. The only cast-member who actually creates a compassionate figure in the whole sorry mess is Ellen Wong as the impressionable Knives Chau (though perhaps her sympathetic nature is mostly earned by her being in love with Cera’s heel of a protagonist).
But perhaps the main reason I dislike this movie so much, despite of its debt to the video-game culture I live and breath outside of cinema, is because like Inception before it (another recent dreamtrip of the video-game generation), this ground has already been covered in far more compelling fashion as a video-game itself, in Goichi Suda’s underrated Wii title No More Heroes. Like Scott Pilgrim, it balanced an odd blender-mix of punk rock, intentionally abrasive characters and an El Topo-esque story of a lightsaber-wielding, pop-culture obsessed moron’s quest to defeat a series of comically outlandish supervillains in order to win the affections of an off-putting chick playing hard to get, complete with the same addictive nostalgia for retro gaming (enemies even explode into coins when defeated). The primary difference is that Suda’s work takes full advantage of the indigenous media upon which it seeks to examine—it’s a video-game about the video-game generation, instead of a movie based on a comic book about the same thing, and as such is able to make his commentary an interactive part of the experience. Just as Cervantes put the romantic longing for adventurous chivalry in literature under the microscope with Don Quixote and Godard swung the CinemaScope camera around upon itself in the filmmaking odyssey of Contempt, Suda’s game works primarily as both a love-letter and indictment of its own medium, while Wright’s film (and to an extent, O’Malley’s comics series) merely acts to co-opt the language of that new form.
While there’s a genuine form of generational sincerity at work in Scott Pilgrim, it’s impossible to recommend as anything other than an anthropological artifact, a cinematic time-capsule as revealing in its own way as Zack Snyder’s take on the Crusader-mythos mentality of Frank Miller’s 300, and nearly as instantly outdated as Meet the Spartans, the garbage-movie parody based on it. It invites the same sense of agency in its audience that games provide without allowing for the same kind of interactivity, making it feel less like a movie and more like a movie-length cut-scene, where the moviegoer spends the whole time waiting for a turn to play that never comes. The fatal artificiality in this movie doesn’t come from computer-generated imagery or blank-slate avatar characters, but from an inherent misunderstanding of what makes people tick, especially in a new multimedia-saturated generation. As a major movie-release targeted towards game-savvy filmgoers, it was released into theaters with a downloadable game for the Playstation 3, a multiplayer arcade-style beat-em-up with animation from pixel-sprite master Paul Robertson, and I can’t help but wonder if they couldn’t have skipped the step of making a motion picture in the first place. Scott Pilgrim was already a video-game to begin with, so why bother trying to downgrade it into a movie at all?
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: * ½ out of *****
If Scott Pilgrim and Inception represent the face of a new generation of action-directors, still stuck in a broken, pubertal voice, then Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables and Phillip Noyce’s Salt represent the mature and dulcet tones of explosive high-concept filmmaking from several decades past. The bad-guys and methods of taking them out are all resolutely old-fashioned—whole armies of South American military cannon-fodder and their gringo conspirators are taken out with nothing more complicated than wrestling moves, throwing knives and pyrotechnic fireballs so explosive they could open for a heavy-metal heavy-hitter on tour, and scheming Russian sleeper-agents capable of acrobatic stunts of close-quarter combat so superhuman they ought to be put on speed-dial for any future Wonder Woman movie. The mis-en-scene on display from Stallone and Noyce remain steadfastly in the past, as well, and refreshingly so—fights and chases are all imagined at great scale, scope and spectacle-reaching histrionics, and captured on film with an eye that favors clarity and coverage rather than Bourne-style helter-skelter. What’s even more interesting is how the two films reflect a paradigm-shift in the gender politics of the genre with their contrasting casts of an Ocean’s Eleven-full house of aging action-heroes as a mercenary army taking on an entire island nation in the former, and a lone-wolf Angelina Jolie running through one cat-and-mouse set-piece after another as a burned CIA operative caught in the crossfire an antique Soviet spy-game in the latter. If they make an odd-couple double feature of macho-men-on-a-mission war-mongering on one hand and femme-fatale turned rogue-spy adventurism on the other, they’re both easily two of the most pleasant surprises to come out in this summer’s worth of blockbusters.
In the case of The Expendables, we have perhaps the climax of an escalating series of action-dramas fueled by cinematic nostalgia, preceded by the latter-day sequels to his Rocky and Rambo series. Those movies were stupid, but had a fun quality to them in the way that he recycled his over-the-hill punchdrunk boxer and world-weary warrior, taking great advantage of refined special-effects technology in the case of the latter to create one of the most explosively gory, yet surprisingly down-to-earth pieces of one-man army moviemaking ever put on the screen. Facing off against Burmese militants with a rag-tag squad of mercenary commandoes, the John Rambo of a couple of years ago was a very different figure from the superhero figure who singlehandedly took down Soviet helicopters to free Vietnam POW’s or fought side-by-side with Mujahideen soldiers in Afghanistan—even though the circumstances and mission were just as ridiculous, Stallone kept the action grounded in that final Rambo picture in a way that none of the previous films ever quite did, perhaps not remotely resembling reality, but at least some sort of distant relative. The Expendables continues that line, though filtered through an increasingly bizarre brand of off-beat, character based humor throughout, that shows off the quirkier side of the testosterone-fueled auteur in ways that might’ve been unpredictable were it not for the flamboyant nature of his directorial debut with the “John Travolta meets A Chorus Line” story of Staying Alive. Most of the characters are one or two dimensional at best, but are given plenty of scars both seen and unseen and amusing personality traits with which to cover them up. We’re given cause to care about the men off the battlefield, even if the only real way to tell them apart during combat is by the weapon they carry.
Stallone’s coverage of the action isn’t quite as sure-footed as it was in his last film, and occasionally gives in to some Greengrassian excess shakes, but that’s primarily thanks to the sheer size and scale of the explosions onscreen—when you’re shooting a mere fistfight there’s no excuse for the herky-jerky syndrome, but when you’re fist-pumpingly blowing up half the acreage of an entire island dictatorship, it’s not so bad. Noyce’s command of action in Salt, on the other hand, is so resolutely committed to by-the-book standards of clarity and spectacle that it’s not just a breath of fresh air, but a whole Scuba-tank full of it. From chases on the tops of trucks across Washington highways to showstopping assassination attempts that literally bring down the house (or in this case church), the film is filled with sequences and set-pieces whose imaginative flavor are often only matched by the tightly-wound, precision oriented way in which they’re shot and edited. As a director who rose to prominence marshalling Harrison Ford’s impressive outings in the Jack Ryan movies, one would do well to wonder where the hell Noyce was during the Brosnan years of the Bond franchise (wasting his time on that crummy Val Kilmer version of The Saint is the sad answer), and as such he makes his return to mainstream blockbusting from almost a decade spent in indie-drama seclusion with impressive results. Even those Tom Clancy movies were mostly dedicated to the academic side of espionage, with well-honed suspense sequences crafted not so much through fights as they were through behind-the-scenes CIA analysis—here, he shows off his pure Hollywood action-instincts, resulting in a sense of scale and scope that could give Martin Campbell a run for his money.
If there’s been one thing that has set the movie apart from the rest of its action-brethren at this time, however, it’s the choice of casting Angelina Jolie as the titular CIA agent at the center of all the running around. Originally written as a male character, and presumably intended for the overdone likes of Tom Cruise (who’s already outstayed his welcome as the replacement for Jon Voight’s turncoat Jim Phelps in the movie version of Mission: Impossible), the part was rewritten as Evelyn Salt with seemingly minimal conversion from one gender to the other. Jolie gets to kick ass and take names just as much as any male action-star counterpart, and with the exception of quickly covering up a security-camera with her panties (chastely shot with her skirt still on for minimal titillation) and her own ubiquitous physical attractiveness, isn’t forced to couple those super-spy heroics with any kind of the trampy, exploitational antics that usually come with the turf of a female action-hero. Sarah Michelle Gellar’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Milla Johovich in pretty much every movie she’s ever been in and Jolie herself as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider—all of them were strong women, for certain, but at the same time were also largely objects of male fantasy, equally known as the wet-dreams of their creators as they were rock’em sock’em superheroines. Evelyn Salt is more Jason Bourne or James Bond than a mere Bond-girl, sexy without being sexually provocative, allowed to express herself and impress the audience more by the mad-skills she shows off or the crazy-kills she ranks up during the course of the film.
The closest things we’ve had to a full-on female action-hero onscreen until now were Sigourney Weaver’s iconic Ellen Ripley from the Alien films and Uma Thurman as “The Bride” in Tarantino’s Kill Bill movies, and while those movies were all thrilling, their R-Rated violence kept them cut out from the key audience demographic that the PG-13 Salt finds its greatest success in—little girls. After I walked out of the movie a couple of weeks ago, still reeling from Inception-fatigue and grateful to have seen a good old-fashioned spy-thriller outdated enough to feature the Soviet Union as the enemy and a middle-aged white guy as the U.S. President, I noticed a mother exiting the same theater as me with a couple of young daughters in her tow, the youngest of whom couldn’t have been more than six. Both of them were in love with Salt, and excitedly described all their favorite parts as they walked out of the lobby and onto the sidewalk, the littlest girl karate-chopping the air while her older sister posed her fingers into a gun and pointed at passers-by in the street. Maybe they would’ve been just as happy to watch Daniel Craig fight bad-guys in another globetrotting 007 adventure, but the fact that they could look up to Angelina Jolie instead as an age-appropriate action-movie role model made it that much better to see. If she doesn’t quite break the glass ceiling, at least she can leave a few bullet holes in it.
The Expendables and Salt: *** out of *****
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I think you’re way too harsh with SCOTT PILGRIM. Granted, the film is a video geeks wet dream of culture regrences and the characters are pretentious “douches” as you amply put it. However, the film itself is a visual explosion of color, graphic design and MTV style flash-cut editing that faithfully brought to life the pages of the PILGRIM comics the movie is based on. The Manga-meets-Kevin Smith-Marvel comics hodge-podge style is loud, brash and completely over-the-top and, as applied to the teenaged fueled dreamstate the whole film places itself in, I felt it worked exceedingly well. As for Micheal Cera, his perpetual why-is-the-world-after-me aloofness was a perfect fit to the comics character. This is NO masterwork, but PILGRIM is a fun way to kill two hours. Flawed? Yes. Bad? No.
Dennis, I haven’t read Bryan Lee O’Malley’s comics, myself, so perhaps you’ve got an extra incentive to find the positive in this film. Fair enough. I did download the free demo for the video-game version of “Scott Pilgrim” last night, and I might purchase the full version.
Also– all I’ve read so far is his “Daredevil” run, but if that’s any indication of the rest of his work, then Kevin Smith is much better suited to comics than he ever was to film (except perhaps for “Dogma”).
Anything with Michael Cera must be avoided. I live by that rule ever since Juno. I accidently break my own decree at times and watch him play the same character film to film. Typecasting is a bitch…….. though he has made a career out of playing himself (which he seems to enjoy). I will never watch Scott Pilgrim, Salt, or The Expendables. Why bother? These are movies that do not give back the time you put in. This is a wonderful bad movie rundown with your usual great writing. I half expected you to throw a 5 star out there just to get people talking lol. Has Bob Clark mellowed out?? Sly Stallone is a true inspiration to anyone without any talent. You can succeed in life without having a clue about your chosen profession. Life imitates art. Where does Stallone begin and Rocky end?
Maurizio, I don’t think I’ve ever given any film here a five-star rating. Not even when I reviewed the “Star Wars” films.
“I will never watch Scott Pilgrim, Salt, or The Expendables. Why bother? These are movies that do not give back the time you put in. This is a wonderful bad movie rundown with your usual great writing.”
Looks like Maurizio has really sized up the situation here to a tee. Nobody will ever return to me the nearly two hours I wasted last night at the Edgewater multiplex watching this drivel. Watching Cera in his action scenes was as bad as scraping your nails on a blackboard. And he’s terribly miscast. All three of my kinds, including my 14 year daughter hated the film. (note above that Dennis was the only one that liked it). There isn’t an iota of emotional connection, and the overbearing style attempts to conceal severe thematic pretentions. The pyrotechnics are grating too. Bob has taken this on down with style and exceeding insight. As to the other two, great work here, but films to avoid.
I haven’t seen The Expendables yet (I hope to tomorrow), but Salt is most definitely not something to avoid. That shot towards the end when Jolie hangs over the railing choking you-know-who with the handcuffs…incredible stuff.
Fair enough Peter. I will try and see this over the weekend if possible.
I didn’t want to mention that moment with the handcuffs, Peter, but it was definitely the coolest kill I’ve seen onscreen in a couple of years. Granted, I wonder a little why she wasn’t shot while doing that, but who cares? Evelyn Salt for the win.
Sam, perhaps as a parent it’s best to screen things before letting your kids see them, but I can definitely reiterate that “Salt” is about as safe as anything I’ve seen lately for children. Usually I’m shocked and bothered to see parents bring their kids to violent, sexually provocative R-Rated movies. There was nothing in this movie that’s really all that bad, though– some cursing maybe, and obviously plenty of shooting and fighting, but nothing truly horrible. It’s all about on par with a modern Bond movie.
As for “The Expendables”– probably the best way to enjoy that movie is on cable television, but it’s still a blast if you’re into that stupid crap every now and then. True, the Rambo movies are better, but that’s just a hard, cold fact of life, brother.
First off SAM, I didn’t LOVE the film. However, as i stated to BOB above, i think its a visually inventive and over-the-top camp piece about the values and attitudes of some of today’s youths.
This is the problem with comic book adaptations. The older generation (I include myself as the “older” although I get the refrences where most don’t-call me “young at heart” and having a brother that’s round the age bracket this film steers for I see this kind of thing all the time) poo-poo’s the films as drivel without ever having a clue about the work its based on and bash it anyway. Most of the older generation find it abhorant to actually pick up a comic book or watch an animated film on the grounds that it’s merely kids stuff and miss the point completely. They are too “refined” to lower themselves to child-like fare and truly believe that it belongs to a phase of adolescence they know nothing about and never went through themselves.
On the grounds of SCOTT PILGRIM being a bad film from a filmic standpoint, I’d say you have a good solid beef had you remained AWAKE for the whole film. I also feel you gave up on the film too quickly and dismissed it as trash before the ball got rolling or because you saw it only as adolescent meandering.
As for Micheal Cera, you are DEAD WRONG with his performance in this film. His laid-back and laconic attitude was a perfect fit for this character and it influenced even the body language of the performance that is immediately recognizable to anyone that has read the comic-books. Simply put, CERA WAS BORN TO PLAY SCOTT PILGRIM.
The action sequences were deliberately outrageous as that’s the way they appeared oin the books as well and although i found parts of the STORY grating, I thought that there was enough razzle/dazzle in the choreography/editing/cinematography and musical score to keep me interested and laughing at the absurdity of it all. Which brings me to the next point…
ABSURDITY… This film is about the absurd, about situations that teens of this ilk blow totally out of proportion when they relay a story from one person to another and it grows more and more elaborate when it passes from one to another to another. It’s like a small smowball rolling down a hill getting bigger and bigger as it gets faster and faster…
If you didn’t like the movie that’s fine, but to bash it on the things that its based on without ever even seeing them is ABSURD. This is NO great classic, I’ll admit that… BUT…
Considering it’s source, the director and the lead actor and the people responsible for the visual candy that makes up this film did just fine.
I’m not saying you have to go out and read every fucking comic book before you see a comic book inspired film, but it might help you appreciate the effort that went into the way it looks and feels. If SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD does one thing, its that it presents itself, quite well i might say, as a living comic book on screen… Shit, they even went as far as to give you dialogue bubble in the frame (can’t get anymore comic book than that)….
IMO
ah yes The Absurd. I’d rather contemplate and see the musings on the subject by Camus, rather then this seemingly piece o’ trash.
Dennis, I get your admiration, having followed the comic to screen in this sort. And if “Scott Pilgrim” were simply a comic-book movie told in comic-book style, perhaps I’d be a little less harsh on it. But both the comic and movie invoke the third medium of video-games, and it’s there that I think a lot of it goes off the rails. Cinema is a medium of passive reception, comics (like literature) are less so, but still nowhere near the kind of interactive experience of gaming. It makes for a very odd experience, and one that crosses a lot of wires while broadcasting its message to the audience, so naturally there’s going to be some mixed signals. I’m a bit more attuned to this being a game-designer myself, but I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.
I enjoyed reading all of these though I don’t really have any intention of seeing any of them. Re: Scott Pilgrim, anything that tries this hard to be “with it”, even if it succeeds for a moment, almost invariably looks tired soon thereafter. When video games and comic books are incorporated into films without as much “Hey Ma, look at my Millennial posturing!” self-consciousness and self-posturing (it sounds like SP is a culprit here, though I can’t say for sure of course) THEN maybe we’ll see some interesting cross-media pollination. That may take someone for whom this sort of thing is second-nature rather than purposefully clever. But then the Millennial generation, aside from mumblecore, is virtually MIA in the world of cinema. The youngest mainstream director who comes to mind is Jason Reitman, and he’s 33, and kind of an industry product anyway.
Aye, I was thinking of Reitman too Joel, but yeah he’s product through and through as we saw with that lamentable UP IN THE AIR.
Worse than that, he’s was already an industry insider from birth. Anyone who basically inherits their position as a filmmaker thanks to nepotism/name-recgonition opening doors for them can’t really be trusted on face value. That’s why I’ll never give a damn about Sofia Coppola’s output, honestlty.
As for the Millenial posturing of SP, you’re right. It becomes obvious once you realise that all the games being referenced throughout are all at least 20 years old (well, except for that ninja-themed DDR clone Scott and Knives play at the arcade, which frankly looked lame as hell).
I don’t want to go that far, for one thing I think Sofia Coppola’s one of the finest filmmakers of her generation, for another no one can help how/where they’re born and I wouldn’t want to hold it against them, but certainly having an “in” to the industry like that might color your approach (when confronted with the “nepotism” charge, Reitman has said it took him years to find financing for Thank You for Smoking, but for Pete’s sake he was – what, 28? when he made it and I don’t think he had the same handicaps as an outsider would have).
Besides, since you’re not just talking in terms of “my dad was a filmmaker” where does “Anyone who basically inherits their position as a filmmaker thanks to nepotism/name-recgonition opening doors for them can’t really be trusted on face value.” leave Jean Renoir & John Huston? Or for that matter, people who did have to break through, but in a different field and were handed their filmmaking career wrapped in a bright ribbon? Orson Welles certainly didn’t have struggle at getting his first film put together (though God knows he paid the price for that over the rest of his career!).
But yeah, it’s hard to see much inspiration for breaking through from any of those figures, I’ll give you that much. And right now, inspiration (as well as the heartily salutary effects of envy) are sorely lacking for our bunch…
Also, the larger point is that his sensibility is completely immersed in insulated-industry-aesthetic, everything is shorthand, glib, slick, there isn’t an ounce of below-surface-personality to be found in his presentation or sensibility. I enjoyed Up in the Air once I got past the airless first half-hour but only inasmuch as this thoroughly inside-the-loop presentation was an (inadvertently?) compelling element of the themes being explored. But he’s kind of the antithesis of a fresh voice, whatever his age.
Renoir and Huston are good examples of industry insiders being a good thing, occasionally. Welles– he’s mostly just an example of the benefits to be gained from provocateurship, isn’t he? Though granted, he had something of a gilded childhood. Sadly, a lot of recognized artists out there start with silver spoons up their asses, anyway, enjoying so many chances and opportunities most people never have access to.
At any rate, though, I just don’t like S. Coppola’s work enough to give her the benefit of the doubt, sorry. And Reitman– well, it’s not even worth talking about him.
also could we consider PT Anderson an ‘insider’? I wouldn’t and even so don’t hold it against him… all the filmmakers discussed here can be dissected without there births coming into question. Rietman, though I do think he would have never made a ‘real’ film without his father, he just doesn’t have enough chops/perspective.
I’m not aware of any insider connections PTA has. But then I only genuinely liked one of his films, so if he was it really wouldn’t change how I feel about him.
It’s small: “Anderson was born in Studio City, California, the son of Edwina (née Gough) and Ernie Anderson, who was an actor, the voice of the American Broadcasting Company, and a Cleveland television late-night horror movie host known as “Ghoulardi”.[4] ”
I watched Ghoulardi when I was a kid in cleveland (not his father, as they are on the third or fourth one– like Lassie), and I read somewhere where being around all kinds of production studios (film, tv, radio even in this small capacity helped). I don’t hold it against him (obviously as he’s one of the best working today), nor would I anyone, but I just wanted to mention it.
Interesting. Reminds me a little of how Michael Bay or some other worthless action director is also the biological son of John Frankenheimer, albeit not raised by him. Best argument ever for nurture vs. nature.
Jacques Tourneur is another……..
Really nice work on these Bob. Great reads and very insightful. I had only maybe planned on see the Stallone for old kicks, and you more then exceed my initial thoughts on what SCOTT PILGRIM was form the trailer/ads.
I was turned off by just the concept: human courtship that needs to go through ‘battles’ vs. the past to go forward. It’s incredibly juvenile, wrong, etc, on my personal ideas on these things. Turns out it’s incredibly lame to boot (as expected). thanks again.
(and to pay you a heck of a compliment, I was reading the ‘Citizen kane’ thread the other day, that ballooned into professional vs. amateur criticism, I must say pieces like this make me believe you–and several others here–could be pros if the opportunity surfaced. I mean, this post is light years ahead of that douche who lives high off the hog at Rolling Stone doing film reviews. I hate him to the point I won’t dirty this blog with his name)
That’s very kind of you to say, Jamie. It’s wonderful to think I have what it takes to work in an industry that’s sadly disappearing. But who knows.
Re: battles with the past– Frankly, I think it could’ve worked okay, had it been handled differently. Wright’s treatment of the material and characters is rather smug and obnoxious, so it’s hard to identify with it. I don’t think it’s necessarily a juvenile or offensive idea to watch a guy confront his girlfriend’s baggage and his own demons in the language of literal fights– in the right hands, it can be a very nice immediate expression of internal emotional conflict. The problem is that the characters are so one-note and the direction so superficial that it wastes the opportunity every chance it gets.
I’m playing the video-game version of this at the moment, and so far I think it works better in this medium than on film. Perhaps actual interactivity was the missing ingredient.
RE: Noyce, I’d also point out to anyone who hasn’t seen his early breakthrough, 1989’s DEAD CALM how good and entertaining it is. Hitchcock meets Polanski’s A KNIFE IN THE WATER, great central performances by the three leads– Horror thrillers are generally not nearly this fulfilling.
Good call, “Dead Calm” is a fine, fleet little thriller. I’m a big fan of his Jack Ryan flicks, and wish he’d gotten to cap those two with a proper version of “The Sum of All Fears”, which Phil Alden Robinson dropped the ball on. “Lost” director Jack Bender’s been signed on for another reboot of the series, however, so I’m hopeful for that. And to repeat myself, I seriously don’t understand why Noyce has never directed a Bond picture.
I really don’t either.
They seem to like a certain ‘flash’, or name hire for a splash in the papers. Most don’t know the name Noyce or can connect it with a few of the films he’s made.
Whereas like they’d go for Greengrass, Nolan or Bigelow first just on name (but NOT do a name selection when it could actually work, like Tarantino for example). But hey we might not see a Bond for a while with the financial struggles that surfaced this past week or so.
I dunno about that, the Bond producers have never really been ones to hire well known names for directors. Martin Campbell was a respected veteran of British television with a couple of features under his belt by the time of “GoldenEye”, but he hadn’t really become famous yet (arguably, he’s still best known as a skilled journeyman and little else). Guy Hamilton is famous for Bond flicks like “Goldfinger” but little else, really, as is Terrence Young (“Dr. No” and “From Russia With Love”) and several lesser directors (John Glen, for starters). The Brosnan years saw somewhat more famous guys like Michael Apted and Lee Tamahouri, but they didn’t really distinguish themselves with the material.
Campbell’s return on “Casino Royale” and Marc Foster’s turn on “Quantum of Solace” have shown that they want directorial talents and are willing to give some more leash than in past years, but I still don’t really think they’re looking for “names” as such. Remember, these are the guys who passed up on Spielberg years ago after he’d proven himself with “Jaws” and “Close Encounters”. They did have the Steve Mendes signed on for the next one (am I getting his name wrong?) and that would’ve been a first– an Oscar winning director on a Bond flick. But who knows, now that it went down the tubes.
Oddly, probably the biggest “name” who was ever signed on to direct a Bond flick based on name alone was probably Irvin Kershner, just after “The Empire Strikes Back”, for the rival “Thunderball” remake “Never Say Never Again”. And look how THAT turned out. If you can’t make better Bond flick with Sean Connery than Roger Moore, you’re really hopeless.
Yeah, you’re right. I guess I meant the flirtation more then the actual hire.
In the case of Nolan and Greengrass, I hope it’s only flirtation. With Mendes and Bigelow, the sooner they put a ring on it, the better.
Oh and Bob, if you get to continually claim that GI JOE is decent and fun (it’s neither, lol) I will state how fun and entertaining I think THE SAINT is.
I have two movies I can think of off the top of my head that I pop in when I more ‘insomnia-tic’ then usual, that are stupid but fun enough to calm me down to sleep. THE SAINT is one, and DEMOLITION MAN is the other. (I read once that I. Bergman reached for Connery Bond films in similar situations)
“The Saint” isn’t quite bad, but it’s beneath Noyce’s talents. Primarily because it doesn’t really have anything to do with Simon Templar at all, when you get right down to it. It’s just a polished, well-honed but rather rote post-Cold War spy/thief caper whose connections to the Leslie Charteris character are vague and tenuous at best. Again, not bad, but if only Noyce had been picking up the slack for the Bond franchise at that time, instead.
And “Demolition Man” is a fun sci-fi romp. Always cool to see a movie that’s more or less based on a song by the Police. All in all it’s a neat comic take on utopian/dystopian politics with some fun, but not really spectacular action.
The best parts of the movie, however, are this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBI8uCKi2lI&feature=related
And this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rVQGT01Kzg&feature=related
that first video features one of the great comments underneath:
“even decades into the future rob schneider still annoys me”
hilarious (I also used to like him on SNL)
I prefer the second video (the only reason I posted the first is to set it up). At times I honestly wish that the entire film was just two hours of Sylvester Stallone spooling off profanity to collect more tickets to use as toilet paper. It’s possibly the best scene Stallone has ever been in.
They’re rebooting Jack Ryan now? Jesus Christ. What’s next – Shia LaBoeuf as the title character in “Bourne is Born”?
I think the pun you’re looking for is “Bourne Again”. Actually, it’ll probably be something closer to “The Bourne Resurrection”.
I give it 10 years – mark my words.
“[. . .] creating a dreamlike, stream-of-consciousness editing style that at times appeals to the associative storytelling of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie evoked by more than the snowy swing-sets and distant love-interests with amazing Technicolor hairdos”
I’m glad to see someone explain their comparison to ESofSM. Most people seem to focus on the hair and move on.
Also, I hope your copious amounts of references to other films, etc. was irony. 🙂
I think it says more about the film’s weaknesses itself, than anything. Sure, when covering guys like Lang, Godard, Lucas or Tarantino you’re bound to run into cinematic intertextuality, as they constantly quote/quoted from other films etc. But at the end of the day, with them, the conversation remains primarily rooted in their own films– with “Scott Pilgrim”, on the other hand, it’s just not interesting/effective enough. With that many works being referenced in name and image, it’s no wonder Wright’s film itself loses focus.
My son is keen to see ‘Scott Pilgrim’ and I was vaguely wondering whether to let him drag me along, but after reading your review, Bob, plus Sam’s comments, I’m hoping one of Max’s friends will go along with him and that I can give it a miss!!
It has this in its favor, Judy– it’s pretty safe to be seen by a kid without a parent. The violence is fierce, but not bloody; there’s talk of sex and making out but no actual nudity; profanity is the part of many jokes, but always either as a self-conscious bleep or by immature characters for whom the last letter in OMG stands for “gosh”. There were plenty of high/middle school kids at the screening I went to, and they ate it up. Actually, I might’ve been the one person in the audience who thought it was all pretty darn stupid, but who knows?
Only thing about the story/plot formula of Scott Pilgrim vs. No More Heroes is the fact that Scott Pilgrim came first in 2004. Where as No More Heroes came along in 2006. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised if No More Heroes was inspired (and I put the term lightly) by Scott Pilgrim. You might wanna research something like that before you say something along comparison lines.
Also, I’m sorry, but screw you on that Samurai Jack comment. Why does something have to be overrated when it’s popular?
Samurai Jack was suspenseful, stylized, action-packed, mesmerizing, and over-all well told as a story. I’m not being a fan boy either. I’ve only seen half the series and I don’t even own any of the merchandise.
In fact, I go to an art college and major in animation. Numerous times Gendy Tartakovsky’s Samurai Jack has been shown to classes as an example for graceful and suspenseful storytelling techniques. These examples are also being shown by professors by most of which were former Disney animation employees that worked on famous films such as Lilo & Stitch, Mulan, Brother Bear and even Lion King. So I’m positive they know what is and isn’t overrated in the animation industry.