Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
Whatever Happened To Dungeons?
Nobody who has been paying attention, will greet it as earth-shattering news that the movie industry has been getting ruined a little at a time by people born after, oh, let us say, 1993 or thereabouts. The problem actually pre-dates ’93, so it’s easy to prove that it is rooted in a certain age bracket, with a revolving membership, rather than a specific birth date. But movies are made for the younger set. To their discredit.
The Hunny and I went to see Pirates of the Caribbean II, which in itself does a great job of illustrating what I’m talking about, but I’d like to discuss something else. Not too long ago I read a rather scathing review of Miami Vice. It really doesn’t matter which one I was reading. It could have been Lisa Kennedy’s review for the Denver Post.
The film, like its oddly rumbling sky, promises more than it ever delivers. Granted, it can look cool. But more often, as we wait for the lightning that never arrives, it frustrates.
Or, it could have been Stephen Hunter’s review in the Washington Post.
The plot is largely meaningless, somewhere between “not a lot of plot” and “lots and lots of plot.” But the worst news about “Miami Vice” is that Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx…don’t hold a candle, a flashlight, a freakin’ match to the original guys. As the infantile, muttery “stars” of today do their thing, you keep thinking: Who are those guys?…They have zero chemistry: There’s no affection or sense of joshing, and their relationships with their women are the most uninteresting thing about the movie.
You know, it’s irrelevant which review; it’s irrelevant which movie…which was proven, when we went back to The Hunny’s place and managed to catch a clip of XXX: State of the Union. It’s exactly what I was talking about a few weeks ago with V for Vendetta and Ultraviolet. The movies aren’t any different from each other. They might as well be the same movie. Those who make movies, are siphoning back on the most expensive ingredient in the mix — creativity — because their consumers are allowing them to do so. Movies are like just so many fifty-gallon drums of…let’s just say for the sake of argument, corn oil. There’s no question about what the stuff is, or what it’s supposed to be, whether it’s good, whether it’s sub-standard. It simply is. You pay for it, you get it, you move on to the next fifty-gallon drum.
The Hunny was questioning the fiscal judgment of a young toe-head lugging around a rather miniscule plate of Nacho’s, which she knew from observation cost in the neighborhood of six bucks. See, that right there is the problem. Mom and Dad want to fornicate all afternoon, so they throw fifty bucks at the kids and send them to the movies. If Dad only has twenties, then the kids get sixty dollars instead of fifty. The kids know they aren’t expected to save anything from this outing to use in the next one, so they fork over whatever they’re told to.
And the movies do what the snacks do. They lose their quality with the passage of time. Why would they not? To keep quality over the passage of time, a product has to have a base of consumers that demand it and will accept nothing less.
So we walk down the hallway and pass a poster advertising the aforementioned Miami Vice. And I pontificated…whereupon, The Hunny, I’m sure, thought to herself “aw shit, he’s pontificating again.” Anyway. I got me a riddle, and the riddle lacks an answer. See if you can answer this.
Something is going on with attention spans, clearly. Kids are not going to sit through Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) (144 min.) and anybody who expects them to, is going to be treated like a crazy person. Rightfully so. It’s a friggin’ musical. And yet…in my day, nobody got bored. Nobody really even thought about it. If you waited long enough, Dick Van Dyke would stop singing, and the car would sprout the wings. It was just a matter of time.
Today there is no matter of time. Kids today are impatient. Call it ADD due to global warming, call it a gradual shift in societal expectations, call it dietary. Call it whatever you want, kids today get bored quickly.
And yet, here’s a script for all movies. All of them. Don’t ask me how I did it, I did it and it fits freakin’ everything.
Scene 1:
Fade from black. The hero walks into view. He is wearing sunglasses and a trench coat. He looks really angry about something. Extreme slow motion. He looks really cool.
Scene 2: The hero looks really cool.
Scene 3: The hero looks really, really cool.
Scene 4: Bad guys, doing bad-guy stuff. They look really uncool, except for the head bad guy who looks really cool. But they’re all very talkative, whereas the hero is deadly silent. They kind of act like hyenas. Except for the head bad guy. He looks sort of like a majestic hyena. Nobody knows what they’re doing, it doesn’t matter, but whatever it is is really naughty.
Scene 5: The hero looks cool. He’s doing something naughty too, except it’s really cool.
Scene 6: The hero confronts the bad guys — coolly — and pulls out from under the trench coat TWO IDENTICAL (a) .45 ACPs or (b) 50-cal. Desert Eagles, one in each hand. He shoots the bad guys, in extra, extra, extra slow motion. Bullet casings fly. The sunglasses stay perfectly balanced on the hero’s nose. Everything looks…well, just stunningly cool. Slow-motion, but cool.
Scene 7: The head bad guy gets away. Looks really cool doing it.
Scene 8: The good guy is angry the bad guy got away. A really cool angry, but still angry.
Scene 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16: The good guy looks cool.
Later on, the good guy confronts a whole new swarm of bad guys, with the head bad guy looking on, laughing maniacally. But coolly. The good guy screams at the bad guys, “Bring it ON!!!” Gunfire ensues. Something explodes. The good guy walks, toward the camera, in slow motion, unflinchingly, as behind him an enormous warehouse/hangar/battlestar explodes in a blaze of glory.
He looks cool.
Bad guy is caught in some terrible predicament. He can’t move, or if he can move, he can’t escape, and there is a grenade or rocket or missile hurtling toward him, maybe the train he is trapped on is about to collide with a mountain of pure dynamite or something. Just before the big kablooey, the film slows waaaaaaaaay down and he gets that always-present always-there can’t-do-without-it look on his face, the “Oh dear Gawd in heaven I SUCK SO MUCH!!!” look on his face. Just as he comes to the realization that the hero is so much cooler than he is, he’s blasted into a million pieces.
The hero makes a smart-ass comment to his boss, and walks off into the sunset.
He looks really cool.
Fade out.
That right there is every single movie made lately. Am I right or am I right?
And kids today, who have no patience for anything else, gobble this stuff up.
Zero patience in one place, endless patience in another place.
I don’t know what it means. There must be a way to make God-type-portions of money off of it. I mean, outside of the movie business. If I think on it further, maybe someday I’ll figure out how.
But you people who want better movies, it isn’t going to happen until we keep the under-fifteen set in dungeons. Where they belong, maybe. I dunno, not saying I’m in favor of it. But from where I sit, nothing short of that will turn things around.
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To quote Futurama “Calculon come Quick! A fight sequenge has broken out in a special effects warehouse! Hurry before a fireball chases someone down a hallway” If you want good plot you’ll almost have to go to foreign cinema. “Ghost in the Shell” and it’s TV derivatives are some of the best sci fi I’ve seen in years, if you don’t hate Anime I recommend them. American independant cinema such as the groups who produced things like “Evil Dead 2” or “Bubba Hotep” can produce wonders too. And if you want unabashed cheapness you can go with Fred Olen Ray or Andy Sidaris for mid budget T&A and cheap thrills which are somehow way more fun than the “accidental” or the far too carefully explained and carefully orchestrated painfully pro feminist boobs in a major flick. ( No we really love Halley Barre for her mind, No Seriously!)
- Thomas Smith | 08/02/2006 @ 21:02They lost it. I don’t know how or where but it’s gone. The days of even the “Cannonball Run” died and seemingly can’t be recovered.