Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: 50% Fan Service, 50% Balls

Today I saw the new TMNT. First, let me say that it's great to see the turtles back in action, and in a respectable way. Not that gaytarded live action crap they had in the late 90's, or that hit and miss, mostly miss, cartoon of the early millenium, but something that you can sink into, and enjoy. It makes me happy in a way that the new abomination transformers movie never will be able to. Unless it defies reason and rocks balls.

With that out of the way, this movie had some sweet designs... if you're not a human. The humans were kind of cheesy looking, as if the designers couldn't decide if they should be realistic or stylized. Completely forgetting that the turtles are totally stylized, they decided to go with a hybrid. Also, the humans color palettes are all far too bright, when the movie has a general dark feel and uses darker colors. But the turtles: sweet! Splinter: cuddly and wise. Monsters: pretty crazy cool designs... all, like, 16 of them. Seriously.

The fighting. You might think that the animators actually bothered to see the way martial artists actually move for this movie. A lot of this stuff was pretty convincing. One rooftop rainsoaked fighting scene in particular.

The story. This is simultaneously the movie's strongest and weakest point. I think this is the part that generally contains the SPOILER warning. So, SPOILERS. It opens up with Leonardo who has been sent to South America by Splinter to learn to be a better leader. It takes place after the second movie, where Shredder was killed, ergo, there is no shredder. Leonardo is in South America where he has a chance meeting with April, who has since become some sort of treasure hunter, and she convinces him to come back. He does, and Michaelangelo, Donatello, Casey Jones, April, and Splinter all greet him with open arms. Raphael is angry, because Raphael is an angry person, that Leo returns. In Raph's mind, Leo is a coward of sorts. He thinks that Leo's Splinter appointed quest was really showboating and turning a blind eye. When Leo left, Splinter commanded the turtles below the surface world to train and prepare for Leo's return. In his absence, Don and Mikey make money. Don as a tech support agent, and Mikey doing birthdays dressing up in a foam turtle suit. Raphael has taken up pure badass vigilantism. And I mean bad. Ass.

And that's essentially what this story is. A conflict between Raphael and Leonardo. The prodigal son, and the farmer's son. The son that left and returned, and the son that has never left. And that, at its essence is what makes this story so good. A conflict between brothers. Leonardo and Raphael's characters are developed nicely. You really see their conflict intensify. It's pretty rich, and thick.

The story is also the movie's weak point. A general discovered a portal 3,000 years ago and unleashed 13 demonic beasts on the world and turned his generals to stone AND destroyed a city at the same time. The (now. thanks to the portal) immortal general feels intense remorse for what he did, not fully understanding the depth of his crime, and spends the next 3,000 years waiting for the portal to open again so that he can fix his wrong... and this is where things get really muddy. First, his generals are awakened from their stone prison through a system not even explained. Next, he hires a certain clan (whose leader is the only decent looking human) to track down these 13 monsters so that he can throw them in the portal and undo the damage.

First, that's too much. Too many items. I like the meat of the plot: brothers have to learn to be brothers. I also like that they didn't use shredder. I also like the reemergence of everyone's favorite clan, but the setup they used... too much. Find a simpler villain, a simpler route. Especially when you take into consideration that they show the capture of 12/13 monsters, fights with the four generals, the gigantic prologue introduction (I'm really hating those things), the brother conflict development, and the main antagonist development. Gear down.

Second, they didn't even properly explain what I saw. Why 13 demons? The movie says, "they continued to plague mankind." Why, then, did it not ever showing them "plaguing mankind" beyond the confines of the movie? Why are they all in NY when they were released in South America? What, exactly, were the parameters of Leo's leadership quest? And then getting these guys back into the portal... why does that undo A. the main antagonist's immortality? B. Kill them? C. What curse? It seems like they were trying to, simultaneously, anthropomorphize and make the portal seem like "just some occurrence." Pick one, and then explain why.

Ah, right. The fan service. It was mostly well used. We got the turtles fighting, Casey Jones fighting, even splinter fights, the Foot appear, and they all throwdown. April O'Neil in a samurai costume? Weak. And the only reason it was done to was to match the current antibias towards women who aren't scrappers, fighters, and otherwise action oriented adventurous. An unspoken commandment: "Thouh shalt not portrayest thine female protagonsits as anything less than masculine, excepting thine female protagonist art elderly, childlike, or otherwise infirmed. Amen."

So, I spent most of this talking about the movie's short comings, but it's not really that way. I mean, the movie's not 300 awesome, but it deserves probably a solid 75%, and could have gotten as high as 90 if it had simplified things a bit. The movie did a lot of things nicely. The style of animation was very complimentary: using a "realistic" level of CG to create very non-realistic looking creatures, blown out proportions (human and otherwise). The moment when Raphael expresses contrition to Splinter was actually moving, and Splinter's response was equally moving. The whole experience stirs up a big old bowl of nostalgia for anyone who watches it. It's a lot of fun.

The Concept of Weird in Film

It's been what I'll describe as a, quote, "long ass time," end quote, since I've posted here, but there's a concept that's been brewing in my head for about a week now.

I was just introduced to David Lynch by my boss's insistance. He lent me the movie Blue Velvet saying, "You'll like this one. It's kind of twisted and a little weird." This is the first Lynch film I'd ever watched, but his weirdness was already known to me. Much like a sneeze is preceeded by a deep breath, so to must "David Lynch" be followed by "weird." I'll be honest: I was only watching it because I wanted to have an informed opinion for why I didn't like him instead of the stereotype I'd given him from hearing other people talk; his movies are nonsensical. Things just happen, gross inexplicable things, and we as the audience are supposed to digest this crap on the principle that it's supposed to be deep or philosophical? Pucky! Film is a story telling platform, ergo, you have to be telling me a story, and story's always have explanations (or at least enough clues to form an explanation) for the things you see on screen.

So, the movie starts, and the weird sort of starts right away. You see a picturesque town where the firemen wave at you when they drive by. In slow motion of course. You see a kindly grandfather figure watering his lawn, and then have a heart attack. His fist still tightly clenches around the hose, and we watch the man's dog nip at the water as it comes out in a stream over the old man's body. We see the old man's daffodils, and then the camera pans down along the stem into the grass. The camera then penetrates topsoil to see an underground subterranean insect nightmare, where we behold beetles crawling all over eachother in a maddened frenzy, some fighting others. Camera cuts to the protagonist walking along.

Since my objective is not film summary, but rather the presentation of a concept, I'll speed this bit along. My interest was waning pretty heavily as it seemed as if it was a movie with a random assortment of characters that went about their lives doing things for no true justification, at least from what I could derive. Things progress, we have a human ear in the grass, the protagonist sneaking into a woman's apartment who gives him oral services and threatens to stab him if he moves, then we have mob bosses beating on women who can't get hot and bothered without getting beaten, a bizarre efeminate pee wee herman duplicate drug boss whose house is populated by old, fat, disgusting hookers apparently for those with extreme alternative tastes.

The movie progresses like this for some time; inexplicable oddity after inexplicable oddity, then the protagonist sneaks into the woman's apartment, and that's where the story comes in. At this point we learn that she's a lounge singer (well, rather, we knew this before) whose son was kidnapped by some drug lord types to keep her quiet on these mysterious doings, and we discover the police department is populated by crooked cops. As soon as I learned all this, I started to become intrigued, and the movie's weirdness was automatically cut by half. It's not that the events were less weird, but I was able to accomodate them better. At the end, the protagonist kills the antagonist, shooting him in the head, and that's all the payoff I needed. I love watching the bad guy get it in the end.

So, when I relayed the fact that movie wasn't all that weird once the story kicked in, he tried to argue with me. "No no no, it's a weird movie. It's sick, it's twisted, it's messed up." No, not really. My boss is also a big horror buff. Love's horror and gore. Me, not so much. I am willing to go through the lowest parts of human depravity as long as there's payoff, redemption, and explanation somewhere. I don't even mind if there's no redemption (Requiem for a Dream), but there has to be a redemptive message, or something like that somewhere. I'm getting off track.

My boss argued with me trying to convince me that it was weird. Same with a girl that frequents where I work. "No," they say, "Blue Velvet is a weird movie." That got me thinking: I know that the movie contains bizarre scenes and occurrences of weird events, but overall, I didn't think the movie was all that weird. Why is that? I thought of movies that I think are weird (which also happen to be crappy in my humble opinion), and namely, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Magnolia are the ones that come to mind. When I pressed my mind for further information, this is the explanation it put forth:

Those movies are weird because they offer up causal events that contain no rhyme, no reason. The movies do an insufficient job in explaining, or providing clues to an explanation, what you're seeing on screen. When the events are put inside of a narrative frame work and given sufficient motivation, they cease to be weird because it's something your mind has grasped.

I like this explanation. In both 2001 and Magnolia, there were segments that I liked, and those were the segments that seemed to be the most story heavy. In Magnolia when the frogs fell from the sky with no explanation, and in 2001 when the big blue baby appeared in space with nary a hint or half assed "why," immediately both the movies were thrown into the realm of weird on the grounds that things just didn't make sense. I've had Magnolia explained to me, and it's pretty much a load of bull. The only way you can derive that information is if someone tells you. Likewise, the only way you understand that baby nonsense in 2001 is if you've read the book, where events are strongly justified.

Even in movies where the weird factor is considerably larger, The Fountain, Donnie Darko, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, they feel to me infinitely less weird and more understandable because they're framed within in a story that justifies what you see, even if the justification is "the guy's on drugs. Y'know, what them ms and all."

So, that's my take on Blue Velvet and the weird effect in movies. Thoughts?

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.

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