the pursuit of happy(i?)ness.

I posted a blog on the Pursuit of Happyness here. I posted it there mostly because the chain of thoughts it created within me transcend a simple review. Go there and read it. And yes, I recommend this movie.

Children of Men

The human race has not had a newborn for eighteen years, and an innocent Fuji girl gets pregnant.

The world is thrown into a chaotic world run by fear and racism. Britain is the only country on earth that hasn't caved under the childless weight of the world, but has had to sacrifice many things to achieve that. No more immigration, Ids required to access different parts of the country, even for citizens, suicide pills doled out in weekly rations for those unable to cope with the bleak childless future, concentration camps, racism. Bleak happenings indeed.

The movie's writing was handled well. The characters are all quite well defined, oftentimes in a single line of dialogue. The old hippy is defined by the line, after telling a character to inhale a puff of weed, “cough. Do you taste that? I call it strawberry cough.” The main character is defined by the line, “good thing I didn't want cream in my coffee, or I would have been blown to pieces.” the mother character is defined not even by dialogue, but her clumsy and earnest attempts to do yoga.

Thematically it's an interesting question. “What does humanity do when faced with extinction?” and deals with the threat of underpopulation opposed to the often overused theme of overpopulation. The love in this movie is of the most interest to me. There isn't really a traditional romantic story. There are hints of a few throughout the movie, but the main source of love in the movie is everyone's love for this girl's baby. The baby is essentially Jesus, able to stop fights mid heat, causing people of different backgrounds to work together, filling people with hope, changing men, both for the better and the worse. Essentially, the message is, “everyone, stop being such douches to eachother. Play together, dammit, and be nice.”

the movie had nudity. At first, I thought, “my, that was unnecessary,” but after thinking about it, no. No it wasn't. I think the nudity was very well served. It's when the girl reveals to the protagonist that she is in fact pregnant, and she is very pregnant. I think this scene was very intelligent for 3 reasons.

1. it was beautifully done. This wasn't nudity for the sake of bewbs, this was thoughtful and planned out. It was very tasteful.

2. The very first piece of art ever discovered was a miniature sculpture of a nude, pregnant woman. I think this movie was trying to draw a parallel from their events to the dawn of man.

3. A pregnant woman is not only iconic, it's incredibly... mysterious. There's something to what happens to a woman that's beyond words. It's a beautiful thing that not only garners the automatic interest of every woman within shouting distance, but it's something that absolutely mystifies the minds of men, as it's something that women experience that has no close approximate in our range of experience. A woman can hide her pregnancy with loose and bulky clothes (as this girl did), but a girl completely deprived of that cannot hide what she is.

4. Bonus round. It was showing what she is: a vulnerable little girl carrying another vulnerable little girl.

This is not to say that I condone nudity in 99% of all instances in Hollywood. I would say that less than 1% it's warranted, justified, or artful. It almost never is. In fact, this is the only time in my years of watching a movie that I think the nudity served a purpose.

The pacing of the movie drags a bit in the middle, maybe. I mean, you have to really push it to squeak out a maybe. It's an incredibly lean film with no extraneous details and everything going into plot and development. The build is a little bit slow, but not too long. The movie all of a sudden explodes, and keeps going with additional minor explosions propelling it along.

2006 made me feel a little spoiled as far as movies are concerned. It was a pretty good year, and it's going to make a nice addition to my shelf: The Prestige, V for Vendetta (wow, I didn't even realize that was an '06 movie. I thought it was '05), The Fountain (my fave for the year), Children of Men, and Pan's Labyrinth.

As a side quandary: what is it with Britain that makes it the target for incredibly facist, tightfisted, controlling regimes? Both V and Children portray that, as does 1984, A Brave New World, Brazil, and while Equilibrium doesn't come right out and say it, everyone has an accent. I mean, come on folks, who are we kidding?

"Monster House"

What do you do when your crazy neighbor's crazy house tries to eat you? Blow it the “fug” up.

I just finished watching Monster House, and it was one of the better cartoons of the digital age. In fact, I do believe it was better than Pixar's last outing, Cars. My only regret is not seeing it in theaters.

Why was it better? Well, put simply, Cars was a little contrived. It wasn't bad, let's be clear on that. Over the Hedge, that was bad (for other reasons I'll get into), Cars was just little forced. It was a more standard morality tale than I think Pixar is used to telling, especially given such spectacular outings about self sacrifice, like Finding Nemo and the Incredibles (which very well may be THE best cartoon of the 3d world), weaving complex tales of belonging like Toy Story and Monsters. Monster House, as all good stories do, spins its own morality tale, but its subtle, and worked smartly into the movie. The kids start out as, well, kids, and by the end of the adventure, have matured, but realize their place as kids and choose to revel in it instead of fighting it. They also learn about the value of loving those that seem unlovable, as well as the standard fare of self sacrifice. Notice that it has smart values worked in, and not preachy political propaganda (Over the Hedge), or bizarre leftist propaganda (Happy Feet). It preaches to things that are firmly rooted in the human heart. Compassion, friendship, loyalty, love.

Love. It has the romance streak in it. The boy gets the kiss from the girl, and then becomes possessed of extraordinary courage. Two friends fight over the aforementioned girl, and the girl learns that just because boys are different, it doesn't make them inferior or stupid. Instead, she learns that she likes not just them, but their kind.

The jokes. The movie had several “laugh out loud moments.” Good jokes, and there weren't any jokes that were supposed to be sly adult jabs. No. All good jokes, all jokes a kid and an adult will laugh at.

The sense of danger and adventure in the movie was genuine. There were real stakes here. The kids had witnessed people getting killed by the behemoth, yet they remained undeterred. The sense of adventure was not forced, or over stylized. Because the concept of the movie was tight, coherent, and by itself interesting, the drama naturally flows. Also, the antagonist, unlike propaganda cartoons (cough, Over the Hedge, cough) isn't some abstraction like, “people,” or “people who disagree with us,” but a very well fleshed out character, with revelations about him that get slowly and intelligently revealed throughout the movie.

The design of the house was badass. Holy crap. Best (and only) monster house I've ever seen. They managed to give it a unique animating style that made it look almost claymation. Plus, the thing was all spikes and serrations, and it mutates at least twice, becoming more ferocious with each transformation. There were a lot of really nice subtle things too, especially with the house. The kids made it gag at one point, so water flowed from its eye (the window), and when it went into hiding, things snapped, like wood, back into place.

So, in a nutshell, this reminded me of a time when cartoons were fun, and you didn't have people breathing down the necks of those who create the cartoons to “tame it down a bit,” (I mean, effectively, 4 people and a dog die in this movie. That's pretty gutsy), or to make it more educational, which always always turns into something political. This played on a sort of classic fear of kids (the scary old guy), and the guys who wrote it just sort of went nuts with it, building it bigger and bigger, more and more ridiculous.

It was good. Watch it. Now.

I also want to clarify my position: Cars was good, just no Pixar good. That translates to, "better than everyone else, still, but not as good as Pixar." Seems paradoxical, yes, but Pixar just rocks that hard. Monster House is just some fluke.

Comedies

On the topic of what makes a comedy funny, I think the biggest thing is the lack of change in the character. I realized this while watching Dumb and Dumber.

In Dumb and Dumber, you watch these two characters go on this journey. Really, it's the hero's journey, and when they come out the other side, unlike a hero, they are unchanged. They even come dangerously close sometimes to self realization only to go back to where they were before. Self realization I think is oftentimes the killer of comedies.

In plays, a comedy is a play whose structure goes from organized to chaotic. As such, Mid Summer Night's Dream, Tempest, and Taming of the Shrew are all comedies. There are even arguments that, despite its tragic contents, Romeo and Juliet is even supposed to be a comedy. Organized familial separation, forbidden love, war, chaos, suicide. Seems pretty funny to me? Perhaps ironic. At any rate, I was thinking about this formula as it applies to some of my favorite comedies.

Other comedies exemplify this. In UHF, daydreaming Weird Al doesn't learn to control or stop his daydreams. Rather, the world around him is affected by his daydreams, and his girlfriend joins him. More chaos.

In Monty Python and the Holy Grail, absurdism is the name of the game. Arthur never wises up, the knights never gain a greater courage. They are the same throughout the entire movie. In the end they're all either killed or... arrested. Not only do they not change, but the consequences aren't even contextually tied to the actions. Pure chaos.

Billy Madison. This one is a bit of an oddball. For as crass as Adam Sandler is, in every one of his movies, the main character goes from being a real jackass to learning some serious life lessons and turning out ok. Billy Madison is no exception. His characters seem to be tragic characters in that they go from being simple and chaotic to complex and organized. However, the chaos seems diverted from the main character to his surroundings. I suppose there's probably some deep psychology here, and I wonder if Mr. Sandler's even aware of it. At any rate, Billy Madison goes from being a lazy booze hound mooching off of his dad's estate to an educated man seeking a career in education. Organized. But the surroundings: at the end of the movie you have a busdriver making out with a penguin, a large black woman kissing a neurotic psychopath that barely saved Billy's life earlier in gun induced awesome, a kindergarten teacher suckin' face with a resurrected clown, and a creepy barbaric overloud lunch lady makin' out with... someone. Memory fails me. Chaos differed. There is no less chaos in the world, probably more, but it's a result of the main character's actions.

Same goes for TV shows. Would South Park remain funny if Cartman was ever a nice guy? How about Family Guy? What if Peter became educated and got a decent paying job? Totally lame. Or how about if the aliens in Third Rock from the Sun every actually understood why and how earth works the way it does? They'd all become dramas. Stories of changing and dynamic characters. Chaos to organization.

Of course there are some translation issues with this method, and their should be. if anything ever becomes formulaic, it loses the thing that makes it interesting. Like with Billy Madison: it's a funny movie. It's a comedy, but his character evolves in a tragic way. Or how South Park has some dramatic elements, like how for awhile Kenny actually was dead, and the kids grieved his death, or once we observed Cartman feeling the sting of rejection after a girl only used him for his intellect. These issues mostly arise from rethinking these concepts and their application, but the general principle applies.

what are it?

this blog is designated for movies. that means reviews, summaries, analysis, analysis of the philosophy of different movies... et cetera. enjoy... bastards.