Taking a break at work I read this wonderful hilarious article from the wonderful hilarious people at Filmdrunk, a publication combining two of my favorite things. GOD can they do comedy!
Forgive me!
I have been lazy!
Well, not lazy. I work 40 hours a week and then write between 20 and 30 the rest, on top of housework, social engagements, reading, cooking, and exercise. I haven’t been this productive in YEARS and it is awesome.
But I have been a lazy blogger!
And I’m doing it again!
Taking a break at work I read this wonderful hilarious article from the wonderful hilarious people at Filmdrunk, a publication combining two of my favorite things. GOD can they do comedy!
Please enjoy this post of theirs, which boiled down is basically The Rock Should Be In All the Remakes.
So I plan on buying two tickets, both to support the movie, and because the theater owner is closing the theater for my friend’s bday.
Normally I skim Jezebel headlines and don’t read too many articles (as a laid-back social progressive, their inexhaustible supply of outrage tires me) but this one caught my eye. I haven’t seen Mad Max yet but I REALLY want to!
“Anybody who has seen the original three Mad Max movies knows that women exist for one of four man-created reasons: to be raped so Mel Gibson can get mad, to be sexual partners with a guy trying to kill Mel Gibson, to be murdered so Mel Gibson can get mad, and to force Mel Gibson to fight in the Thunderdome. They have character names like “Nurse,” “Nightrider’s Girl,” “The Captain’s Girl,” and “Victim.” ALL OTHER REASONS ARE A PERSONAL AFFRONT TO ME AND THE SACRED LEGACY OF MAD MAX, WHOSE HAUNTED EMOTIONAL EMPTINESS I RELATE TO ON A VERY DEEP LEVEL DESPITE THE FACT THAT MAD MAX WATCHED HIS FAMILY DIE IN A HOPELESS FUTURE HELLSCAPE AND THE WORST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO ME WAS THAT SOME GIRLS SAID THEY DIDN’T WANT TO BUMP UGLIES BACK WHEN I WAS A TEEN.”
It’s… *wipes away a tear*… it’s such glorious, glorious parody.
I haven’t seen it yet because a friend forbade me to until his birthday, so a bunch of us are getting together on Thursday night to see it.
I am hurting from not seeing it. HURTING.
So I plan on buying two tickets, both to support the movie, and because the theater owner is closing the theater for my friend’s bday.
Play a game of charades with some friends and see how far you get if you have to act out anything more complicated than simple nouns or verbs. Chicken? Easy. Chicken Little? Somewhat harder, but there will still be copious pantomiming to get the point across. Even if you know the person very well, you’ll still occasionally have to guess what they’re trying to depict.
Recently I wrote about my cinematic fail in watching Force Majeure. Basically I failed to understand the newest Netflix interface and didn’t push that most important of buttons when it comes to foreign film-viewing: SUBTITLES Now, you can totally fumble your way through a foreign film without subtitles given the right conditions. Such conditions include:
A passing familiarity with the language (I know enough French to follow some movies without reading the titles, but if anything gets more complicated than the present tense or basic concepts, I’m sunk)
A passing familiarity with the culture (You don’t have to master the pluperfect verb tense to know when people are yelling at each other)
A passing familiarity with the story (You might recognize themes or situations from famous plays, books, mythology, or graphic novels)
A story simple enough to surpass language (Dead Snow comes to mind; do we really need to know why the zombies of reanimated Nazis are harassing these attractive skiers and ruining their holiday? Do we?)
But! As I learned, context is key, and for context you must have translation, some kind of intermediary to help guide you to the salient points.
Picture this: two well-dressed people are meeting in a Parisian cafe. The director has done his job, and despite the beautiful, laid-back surroundings, the score is tense, as are the faces of our characters. You know it’s a crime film, you know someone young was murdered and dumped in a ditch and had some kind of relation to these two. Now: what more do you want to know? Who started it? Was it justified? How long’s it been going on?
I don’t need translation to watch Godzilla to know that giant monsters destroying buildings is a bad thing, but what about trying to guess what was happening in the Avengers (assuming you were unfamiliar with the characters)?
“There’s a big blue ball, and it’s just absorbed this little gold ball, and now it’s… there are a lot of windows, and now there are robots everywhere but there’s also one robot who … is standing there talking about something, and now there’s a bigger one and a man in a suit with lasers and now there’s a farm where the people are and again we’re back to the city and robots lots of robots and OMG FLYING TOWN and another flying man with lasers coming out of his head and now everything is okay but might not be. Whatever, it was worth the 10 bucks.”
Context is everything, especially in an age when so little culture is shared on an intimate level. With no subtitles or dubbing, I might recognize a Thai person by their mode of dress or the sound of their language or the shape of the letters on signs in the background or the presence of tuktuks, because those are the big contextual markers. I won’t recognize the little nuanced ones, like the nature of their relationships with other people. I might miss little gestures accompanying the person’s movements that indicate their relationship, like a deferment to an older relative or a rolled eye to indicate a tiresome friend. Even something that should define a relationship, like a sex scene, doesn’t help because you don’t know if these people are together, cheating, or engaging in a forbidden affair.
Play a game of charades with some friends and see how far you get if you have to act out anything more complicated than simple nouns or verbs. Chicken? Easy. Chicken Little? Somewhat harder, but there will still be copious pantomiming to get the point across. Even if you know the person very well, you’ll still occasionally have to guess what they’re trying to depict.
A movie without context is a series of Rorshach images that the viewer can pull all kinds of things from, depending on their perspective.
What happened was I basically failed to notice the option on Instant Watch that allows you to activate the subtitles. That’s on me.
ANYWAY – I recognize that I basically watched the movie wrong. I get that. But I didn’t finish it, a rare thing for me. And ti was for the following reasons:
I found the family to be insufferably uninteresting
I found their family crisis difficult to care about, since they were experiencing it in the midst of magnificent natural beauty, AND European luxury. I have never seen real snow, but feel confident that the resort they were staying at did not accept coupons or have the kind of breakfast bar where no one cares if you put loose cereal in a ziploc to take with you
JEN: *reads an article about great Oscar movies that everyone should see* “Ah, I now know this movie exists. If I wander across it directly, I shall see it. The description is not grabbing me though.”
(a month goes by)
*The film plays at the local art house*
JEN: “Oh look! I know what that movie is!” *end of thought*
(another month goes by)
JEN: *bored at work and mini-stalking Kristofer Hivju’s beard, finds out he is in the movie* “Ah. Perhaps I shall see it now. I like him in Game of Thrones.”
(a few days go by)
JEN: “Oh gosh! Force Majeure is on Instant Watch!” *presses play* “Huh. There are no subtitles and I do not understand the Swedish words they are speaking. Perhaps that’s just how the movie was released and it’s such a universal story about human drama and the disintegration of family after a traumatic event that the language doesn’t matter. I shall watch it.”
(halfway through the movie)
JEN: “This was a terrible idea.”
What happened was I basically failed to notice the option on Instant Watch that allows you to activate the subtitles. That’s on me.
ANYWAY – I recognize that I basically watched the movie wrong. I get that. But I didn’t finish it, a rare thing for me. And it was for the following reasons:
I found the family to be insufferably uninteresting
I found their family crisis difficult to care about, since they were experiencing it in the midst of magnificent natural beauty, AND European luxury. I have never seen real snow, but feel confident that the resort they were staying at did not accept coupons or have the kind of breakfast bar where no one cares if you put loose cereal in a ziploc to take with you
Perhaps some people enjoyed the movie for those reasons – seeing a privileged family brought low by revealing the cracks within their facade. I don’t really have much truck with schadenfreude, so perhaps that’s the problem.
Also, I live in Orlando, Florida, a popular family vacation destination. I have seen my share of meltdowns, of families who have reached the breaking point and are torn asunder by nature. Think this Swedish family’s plight in the face of a controlled avalanche was something? You need to see Scandinavians in one of the lines at the Magic Kingdom, when they realize the wait sign is serious when it says ‘3 HOURS+’ and the temperature is merrily boiling into the 90s. I have seen sunburns in shades of purplish-red that would make even the cruelest torturers in history wince and shake their heads.
I have seen children epically lose their shit for a variety of reasons, many of them valid (Mom and Dad didn’t spring for the 30+spf and are paying the price, they didn’t bring extra bottles of water, they are burning through their energy reserves because feeding a family of four at a theme park can get into the triple digits for one meal, they vastly underestimated the cost of everything). I saw a family sneak their child on the Tower of Terror and that kid did NOT have a good time- he was crying and shaking by the end. And when you’re trapped on a ride with a kid (or adult!) having a freakout, it doesn’t matter if you’ll never see them again after the three-minute ride is over – those three minutes will last approximately 8 Bronze Ages. My heart went out to him, as it does for every tourist who doesn’t acknowledge our UV index. The tourist bureau even tries to warn them! I wish I could afford to buy sunblock and just hand it out to people!
HOWEVER – as I have said, I could only guess at the dialogue of Force Majeure and what it was conveying; probably a lot more nuance and depth than I was prepared to accord to the characters. You’d be surprised how many cognates you understand when you’re grasping at straws!
I managed to make it to Kristofer Hivju but even that couldn’t keep me interested. Even so, I’m glad the film and his role on Game of Thrones is getting him noticed in the international film community, and he continues to do well. I mean look at this picture of him:
Just a handsome man about town, walking his beard
He just looks like he’s having a wonderful time, wherever he is. The scarf! The boots! The expression of ‘Oh, who’s that over there? My bad, I don’t know that person, but they are probably a friend I haven’t met yet!’ *a small crowd of followers accrues behind him, singing jolly Norwegian folk songs*
I’m going to make it my business tomorrow to try and have a least as much fun as he appears to be having.
Well, three-quarters.
At least half!
I might give the movie another go – we’ll just have to see!
Preacher is not a graphic novel for everyone, but I would have said the same about Walking Dead and that blew up like marshmallows in a microwave – I know kindergarten teachers who are rabid fans. Hopefully this show will have the same appeal while sticking to the storylines.
I find myself distressingly out of the loop with these actors – I have no idea who any of them are!
I am so happy this show’s getting made, and on AMC no less, so they won’t shy from some of the…errmm… edgier content in the stories. There’s so much to look forward to – I can’t wait to see who they get for Starr!
And although it’s looking like my dreams of seeing Woody Harrelson as Jody won’t be realized, I am curious to see who they do get to play that role.
Preacher is not a graphic novel for everyone, but I would have said the same about Walking Dead and that blew up like marshmallows in a microwave – I know kindergarten teachers who are rabid fans. Hopefully this show will have the same appeal while sticking to the storylines.
Breakdown: Jesse Custer (the ubiquitous Preacher, not yet cast) has lost his faith and is drinking himself to oblivion while preaching in a small, shithole town in Texas when a strange entity takes up residence in his body. The entity is a creature of limitless power that gives Custer the Word of God, allowing him to command people to do his bidding. However, Custer is conflicted about this power and only uses it in moments of great need – such as defending the love of his life, Tulip, or his drunken reprobate best friend, Irish Vampire Cassidy. Jesse sets out on a quest, with his friends in tow, to understand this power, and ultimately to force God to answer for the faults in His creation. Along the way he encounters a vast, international organization that controls the nations of the world and is bent on bringing about the apocalypse; a couple serial killers and inbred hicks; the KKK; a voodoo priest; an old cowboy; his father’s past as a Vietnam veteran; and a rejected astronaut who has written his life’s message on the earth since he was denied his shot at the stars.
The series was printed in the 90s and is a CLASSIC of modern graphic novels. It deals with so much and is such a uniquely American story.
