TV Time: Doctor Who Recaps: Series 8 Episode 2, Into the Dalek (TVPG - BBCAmerica - 45 mins)

Alo Party Peoples.

Written by Phil Ford.
Directed by Ben Wheatley.

After getting some feedback from a friend regarding this column I realized something. I already knew that stuff specifically devoted to Doctor Who would have a more limited, niche appeal than covering new movie releases, but due to the nature of this show, the things I describe must sound insane. When you have a show that has existed for nearly fifty one years, has been produced for thirty four of those years, had its lead actor switched out eleven times, supporting actors switched out even more, has existed in a myriad of social and political contexts, and endlessly references its own history, that is kind of unavoidable.

That isn't helped by the fact that Steven Moffat, the current show runner, tends to use time travel as more than just an excuse to move characters to and from the next adventure. Namely, he uses it for contrived retroactive changes to continuity. So if what I say in this sounds insane, enough that you find it unreadable, I apologize. I probably should have started with an explanation of what the show is about. As compensation, I will do that now.

EXPOSITION-There's this guy, he's named The Doctor. He's an alien, last of his kind after his planet went kaput in a temporal war. He travels all of time and space in the TARDIS, a surprisingly spacious time machine disguised as a mid 20th century London police box. He often picks out/abducts people to serve as his traveling partners, which fandom has dubbed "companions". They have all sorts of bizarre adventures through history, the future, deep space and all sorts of worlds, the writers can tell any story they want. As you might have guessed, traveling all of time and space is dangerous work, and he has close calls with death pretty frequently. When this happens, he can "regenerate" himself and heal all of his injuries, at the cost of a completely new appearance and personality. This was originally introduced so the original lead could leave due to his failing health, and now it's a mini event.-END EXPOSITION

See what I mean?

Glad I got that out of the way, and now onto the new episode, where we open with a big space battle against the Daleks. EXPOSITION- The Daleks are the Doctor's nemesis. Born from the radioactive ruin of the planet Skaro, they are deformed aliens that encased themselves in impenetrable armor, the design of which has not aged very well. They operate on the principle that peace is impossible unless they "Exterminate" all other life in the universe. This lead them into the aforementioned temporal war that destroyed the Doctor's people, which makes him hate them all the more. Imagine if Stephen Hawking had an invincible battle chair and Hitler's philosophies, that's a Dalek in a nutshell-END EXPOSITION.  Yeah, get used to that sort of thing, I have a feeling that it will come up pretty often with this show.

Anyways, we focus on one particular human craft as it becomes a casualty, but the pilot has been rescued by the Doctor. She is understandably horrified by the mysterious man that showed up as she died, and convinces him to take her back to base, on an asteroid. Where she and the Doctor are apprehended, and, upon hearing that there is a Doctor that just arrived, are taken to the base's one lone prisoner. A heavily damaged Dalek that is going on about how it must be destroyed, which peaks the Doctor's interest. After the intro, we cut to present day London, where Clara has just met a new co-worker, Danny. A veteran that, has no discernible character and doesn't really factor into the A-plot at all, so there is no reason to have him here. It doesn't really matter since soon after, the Doc arrives and we learn that from Clara's perspective, it's been three weeks since the end of the last episode.

He seems to have brought her on-board again to ask a question. "Am I a good man?" She responds that she really doesn't know. Understandable, he's literally a different person now, and it makes sense that the Doctor would have some concerns about that. It also makes sense that Clara, after not seeing him for three weeks, couldn't answer that question. It's a nice little moment that gets cut off because Doc decided to take her to the asteroid base. We learn that the Dalek is dying, and since it is uncharacteristically self hating, they want the Doctor to shrink himself ala The Fantastic Voyage and climb inside to see what's causing this. He is accompanied by some of the soldiers, which makes sense, and Clara, which doesn't.

There usually isn't that strong a reason for the Doctor to get involved in the problem of the week, but without it there wouldn't be a show half the time. However, here it makes even less sense. They already have suspicions that the Doctor is a Dalek spy, and now he disappeared and came back with a mysterious woman, how is he still trusted by them?

Anyways, Doc, Clara, and the soldiers all get put inside a pill, and enter via the Dalek's eye to get to it's brain, where they suspect the problem is. Once they're there, the Doctor goes on about the suppression systems meant to keep the Dalek angry, and how they seem to be on the fritz. After the soldiers start firing grappling hooks into it's brain for, no apparent reason now that I think about it, the Doctor freaks out about it since this activates the Dalek's internal security/immune system. (I'll never say this show is lacking creativity) It kills a couple of extras, and our heroes run down to it's digestive system, where they notice a surprising level of radiation. It turns out that the Dalek's fission reactor/heart is leaking, and that's probably what's gone wrong.

They go down to it's heart, and the Dalek starts talking to them. He starts talking to the Doctor about how it saw true beauty in the heat of battle. How it saw war, worlds being destroyed, but it also saw something else. It saw the birth of a star, a sort of light emerging from the darkness. That changed something inside the Dalek. It saw that no matter what, life would find a way. That "resistance" to that, a resistance that is the only reason he lives, is futile. That, is actually a clever and interesting inversion of that sci-fi cliche, which becomes irrelevant for a while since the Doctor fixes the radiation leak, and that immediately restores the Dalek to it's original programming/philosophy.

As fans of the show could have predicted, as soon as a time traveler helped a Dalek, it immediately goes on a killing spree across the base and calls for backup. Even a heavily damaged Dalek is pretty much unstoppable, which brings me to the older episode that this derives from, which looks to become a common thing with this season. In particular, the episode Dalek, which was also about a heavily battle damaged Dalek being helped by a time traveler and going on a killing spree through a heavily fortified base as a result. It is also my favorite episode of the show. It raises parallels between our hero and our villain, that, when things get serious, the Doctor is just as willing to resort to dirty measures as his enemy. An idea that is summed up by the line "YOU WOULD MAKE A GOOD DA-LEK!", said after he had been reduced to foaming rage and had started torturing the beast, because he hates them that much. Into the Dalek, feels like reheated leftovers of that episode. There isn't anything lesser about it, but time has dulled the flavor.

Anyways, Doc heads towards the brain as the soldiers pointlessly try to stop the Dalek's rampage, and since the soldiers received no characterization, most of them don't even have names, I felt uninvested in their struggle to the point that all I thought during the battle was "shouldn't the Doctor be regenerating after being so close to a fission reactor for so long? It's happened before." We're running out of time, so quickly, Doc gets to the Dalek's brain, sort of mind melds with it, and confronts it with the limitless wonder of creation that it had already discovered, successfully talking it out of it's rampage. It even convinces it's commanders to retreat, off screen, so there is no impact to this turn. Doc get's called a "GOOD DALEK!" in another callback to better episodes of the show, and Clara gets back to her irrelevant romance. The End.

I, don't have that much to say about this episode other than to say that is reheated leftovers of a better one. Peter Capaldi is still in top form, and he's loving this part. Jenna Coleman, while she has nothing to work with as Clara, comes off as a likable personality. Overall, this is an improvement over last week, but that ain't saying much. Next week, it seem's we're getting a period piece about the Robin Hood legend.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Go Out To The Movies: If I Stay (PG-13 - Warner Bros. - 1 hr, 36 min)

Directed by R.J. Cutler
Written by Shauna Cross

Alo Party Peoples.


Two weeks ago, in in my review of The Giver, I stated that there were five YA movies that were either being released or had already been released this year. Divergent, The Fault In Our Stars, The Giver, The Maze Runner, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1. Well, it looks like I missed one, today's subject If I Stay, one of the most frustrating movies of the year. I hope I can explain why.

Mia Hall is a bright young woman about to graduate high school that has a passion for playing the cello and just applied to one of the most prestigious liberal arts schools in the country. On the way to visit her relatives, she gets into a terrible car wreck and ends up in critical condition. The bulk of the story concerns her having an out of body experience in the hospital where her body is being treated. She sees her relatives, friends, and boyfriend Adam worrying about her as she decides whether or not it's worth it to wake up.

These scenes, as she struggles with whether to go on, are where If I Stay shines brightest and comes frustratingly close to perfect. Young actress Chloe Grace Moretz is rather brilliant in the lead role, and she completely sells the grief of seeing her immediate family die around her in the emergency room, each passing leaving her with less of a reason not to leave the mortal coil. Unfortunately, this is inter cut with flashbacks, or hallucinations, it isn't entirely clear if she's actually a soul waiting to get to the afterlife, of the last year and her relationship with Adam.

These scenes play out as a twee, indie rock filled, teenage romance that left me thinking "Come on, this is a slog, go back to the hospital, that was great." If I needed shorthand to describe this part of the movie, it would be that it feels like The Fault In Our Stars with none of the charm. Not that these scenes are entirely bad, it's competently shot and acted, there aren't any glaring plot holes to discuss, it just doesn't aim that high.

If I Stay feels like half of a really good movie spliced together with half of a thoroughly mediocre one. The hospital scenes are a fantastic slow burning melancholic mood piece and if that was the entire movie, it would almost be worth a matinee, but it is held back by being fused to a weepie romance story that keeps it strictly in the average category. There's a reason this got dumped at the beginning of the dry spell.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

TV Time: Doctor Who Recaps: Series 8 Episode 1, Deep Breath (TVPG - BBCAmerica - 1 hr, 19 mins)

SPOILER ALERT


Alo Party Peoples.

Written by Steven Moffat
Directed by Ben Wheatley

I realize that I need a better long term solution for slow release weeks than either taking stuff off of my DVD shelf or looking at premium on demand cable offerings (although that second one isn't bad), so I'd like to introduce the revival of something I had tried before. The new season of Doctor Who has just started, and for twelve weeks I will have something new to talk about regardless of what films have come out.

It is no secret that I wasn't impressed by the 50th anniversary episode Day of the Doctor, and I was in the minority there. I've already expressed my issues with it, so-so acting, excessive fanservice, too much focus on NuWho for what was supposed to be a celebration of the entire series, a climax and resolution that, in my opinion, undermined the title character's arc, and an odd lack of effort for something that the BBC was hyping up so much. If you want an actual celebration of fifty years of Doctor Who, I would recommend the docudrama about the franchise's beginnings that came out a day before the anniversary, An Adventure in Space and Time.

The subsequent Christmas special, The Time of the Doctor, was a fortunate improvement. It was a much better sendoff for Matt Smith's Doctor, and it had a sort of charm to it, even if it didn't quite fix the excessive fanservice problem of Day. In that episode, Smith's Doctor was granted a new set of extra lives by the Time Lords (more or less his old bosses) and subsequently became Scottish actor Peter Capaldi, who forgot how to fly his time machine to the horror of his passenger Clara.

We open, with a dinosaur tromping around Victorian London as Vastra, Jenny, and Strax (short version, the lesbian lizard woman from the age of dinosaurs, her human wife, and their alien butler, they're private investigators for some reason and writer/show-runner Steven Moffat loves shoehorning them into stories) watch. It coughs up the TARDIS (his time machine) and they head out to investigate. They come across a rambling Doctor and a horrified Clara. Twelve rambles at them for a while, faints, and then a not terrible but not especially good new intro sequence plays (that's the best version I could find). If I'm getting any vibe from this episode, it's that Twelve will be the Crazy Doctor, I'm not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, Capaldi fills that role exceptionally well. On the other hand, this Doctor scares me, and Clara.

From left to right, Christopher Eccleston (41 at casting),
David Tennant (34 at casting),
 and Matt Smith. (28 at casting, youngest Doctor ever)
 Notice anything about them? Here's a hint.
Peter Capaldi, at 56, is the oldest Doctor ever.

Anyways, after Twelve is crazy some more, Vastra gets him to sleep via an out of place cartoon-ish sound effect and psychic lizard powers that she suddenly has, and starts talking with Clara about why her friend suddenly has a new face. (short version, when the Doctor gets close to dying, he can renew his body but he loses his old identity in the process) Vastra then reprimands Clara for supposedly judging this new Doctor because he looks old. I can't help but think the intent here was to reprimand fans that had done that when Peter Capaldi's casting was announced, which I can get behind - what with Christopher Eccleston being my favorite Doctor - but I have two problems with this. 1) Most of those fans have probably only ever seen either David Tennant and/or Matt Smith in the part, not unlike Clara, and 2) I don't blame those fans or Clara for prejudging Capaldi/Twelve when the first thing this Doctor ever said to them/her was going on about his new kidneys, and informing them/her that he forgot how to fly his his time machine.

Later that night, the Doctor bolts awake, draws a bunch of stuff on the floor, runs across the rooftops of London to find the dinosaur, starts promising said dinosaur that he will bring it home, and it then bursts into flames before his eyes. Clara and the Paternoster Gang (fan lingo, how I will refer to Jenny, Vastra, and Strax collectively from this point forward) head to the corpse of the dinosaur looking for the Doctor. They find him and he's crazy at them some more while pointing to a man across the river Thames, which he then leaps into and swims away. (This character really is as crazy as my description makes him out to be) This man then reveals himself to be a cyborg and steals a passerby's eyes in plain view of all. Yes, it's night when this happens, but that won't hide the screaming. Cut to commercial.

The next day, Twelve starts digging through trash in the streets, monologues to a homeless man about his new face and the nature of regeneration, and presumably steals his coat. It turns out he was looking for newsprint and finds an article on spontaneous combustion, which serves as our transition to Vastra and Jenny discussing that topic while Jenny poses gratuitously for a portrait in what can only be described as pandering fan-service. There isn't even a story reason for this since Vastra wasn't painting her, she was working on a collage of newsprint about spontaneous combustion and a map pointing to a restaurant. Clara then walks in with a newspaper where the words "Impossible Girl" (something the old Doctor used to call her for reasons too convoluted to get into here, short answer, time travel) are opposite an advertisement for that same restaurant. Cut to commercial.

Later, presumably that afternoon, Clara heads to this restaurant and finds Twelve waiting for her. Now she's certain that he used his time machine to leave those words in the paper for her to find. They have some well acted banter, Doc calls Clara a needy and says she has a massive ego (dear god, this Doctor is a real jerk) and they notice something about the other customers at the restaurant. None of them have been breathing, they seem to run on clockwork. Then, like clockwork, a waiter arrives as they were about to leave and starts listing various useful organs. (this was reminding me of a vastly better Series 2 episode, The Girl in the Fireplace, that will be important later) It turns out they are the menu, and their booth restrains them before dropping them down into the basement where they will presumably be eaten. (You know, for kids!) Cut to commercial.


When we return, the Doctor and Clara have arrived in a chamber that appears to be the lair of the cyborg from earlier. Twelve pulls out the magic wand sonic screwdriver, and frees them. Twelve claims he's seen stuff like this before, and they start talking about the cyborg. Twelve notices that his hands do not match, and this leads him to say that it must be a "reverse cyborg", i.e. a machine giving itself organic implants rather than the other way around. Props for creativity there. Then the clockwork men start moving and our heroes decide to start running. Unfortunately, the door drops and traps Clara inside. The Doctor tells her to take the deep breath of the title to hide herself from the gear people. Even though he has the sonic screwdriver with him, which is more or less a magic wand by now, and he runs off. (Seriously, Twelve is a real jerk)

We now follow Clara as she walks awkwardly through the derelict vessel while holding her breath. Occasionally, the camera switches into first person from her perspective, and for some reason red flashes start appearing on the sides of the screen. At first I thought this was a transmission error, then I thought it was probably an attempt to visually depict oxygen deprivation. Eventually, she has to breathe and the gear people recapture her. Making this scene, sort of pointless. Cut to commercial.

When we return, Clara is being questioned by the Reverse Cyborg about where Twelve is, and she asks why they killed the dinosaur. Despite it insisting that they will not answer questions, it eventually says they did it for a part of the beast's optic nerve. Which means they've been on Earth long enough for them to know that a dinosaur would contain something useful to them. Remember when I mentioned a Series 2 episode earlier, that's coming into play now. That episode, The Girl in the Fireplace, involved a derelict starship which had a rather extreme self repair system run by clockwork robots. In the words of Tennant's Doctor in that episode "nobody ever told it the crew were off limits", these gear people are from the same fleet.

This makes no sense. In Fireplace, there was a reason for them to dismantle the crew, the ship was in deep space and stuck at sub-light speeds with very little chance of rescue, that ship was in a desperate situation and that called for desperate measures. The ship in today's topic on the other hand, is on a planet in an area with the capacity for mass production of various things. There is no reason for them to immediately resort to dismantling humans. Then again, maybe after apparently being on Earth since the age of dinosaurs, they're used to dismantling living creatures by now, I don't know.

Anyways. It then mentions a "promised land" that they have been trying to repair their ship to reach. Then Twelve pulls off a face he stole from one of the gear people for a disguise (they didn't hear him breathing?), and calls Clara a control freak for no apparent reason. Then the Paternoster Gang drop into the room in an unintentionally comic fashion for a brawl, and then, (what is it with this climax's pacing?), the restaurant, rises into the sky via, a hot air balloon made from human skin. (You know, for kids!) I, don't know if that's brilliant in an insane way, or just uncharacteristically morbid.

We need to wrap this up, so I'm just going to skim over the resolution. Clara and the Paternoster Gang hold their breath for a long time, Twelve is crazy at the Reverse Cyborg and claims that he is looking for a promised land as well (short version, lost home planet), he uses the argument that it has replaced every part of itself by now and is thus dead, and convinces it to commit suicide by jumping down and impaling itself on the roof of a church. (Again, Twelve is a real jerk) Clara is understandably horrified by this Doctor, she gets a phone call from the old Doctor telling her that Twelve needs her, she takes this at face value, and flies away with a madman. The End.

Pictured, the Sixth Doctor about to strangle his companion

What can I say about this episode that I didn't already say. I could list some good points. For one, Peter Capaldi is fantastic as the new Doctor, he's written to be a real prick, but he embodies that meanness well. If I have to compare him to any of the previous Doctors, I would choose Colin Baker, the Sixth Doctor. The one that was a complete jerk to his companion, possibly had severe bipolar disorder, strangled his companion in a fit of post regenerative rage, and came across as a madman with a magic box. (and all in his debut story) Don't mis-interpret me, Deep Breath not as bad an episode as The Twin Dilemma was, and Twelve gets physical with Clara, but he is verbally abusive to an extent.

That isn't meant as an insult to either one of them, but like Baker, Capaldi is a fanatastic actor that has to work with a bad script. One that has a glaring plot hole and where the new lead character comes off as a terrible person. I'm not left with good impressions for the season to come.


Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Lets (Not) Go Out To The Movies: Life Itself (R - Magnolia Pictures - 1 hr, 46 min)

Directed by Steve James

Alo Party Peoples.

Documentaries are a hard thing for me to talk about. Since they aren't a narrative form, at least not primarily, it becomes very hard to review one without falling into a list of stuff they got right, got wrong, or left out, and if the final production falls on the dry side, you probably can't hold that against it, because, dems' the facts man.

As there were few new releases this weekend, I once again turn to on demand cable offerings. This can be a good way to shed some light on smaller scale independent productions, foreign imports, TV specials, and documentary features that didn't make it into theaters. It also has the added bonus of letting me do more of this job from my home.

Last time we did this, it was Clark Gregg's passion project Trust Me, which, while certainly an admirable effort, wasn't exactly a masterpiece. Fortunately, today's topic, Life Itself, is a much better film.

Named after and based on a memoir written by the late Roger Ebert, this documentary chronicles the entire life and career of the influential film critic, from working as the Chicago Sun-Times' film critic and winning the Pulitzer Prize, to his 30 years working on television with Gene Siskel and Richard Roper, to his transition into writing for the Internet after thyroid cancer rendered him unable to speak in 2007.

If it weren't for Ebert helping to turn film criticism from a journalistic odd job into a form of entertainment itself, and putting that idea into the popular psyche, I probably wouldn't be writing this now. So I suppose I owe him a sort of retroactive debt.

The film is composed of interviews with Roger's friends, co workers and family, archive footage of him on At The Movies, and footage of Ebert in a hospital and rehabilitation center after a hip fracture in December of 2013, this would turn out to be his final stay as the fracture had become cancerous.

Life Itself is an informative, well put together documentary, and I expect it to be shown in film and journalism classes if it ever gets a release on physical media, even if it's only as something for this country's overworked and underpaid teachers to slap in the DVD player to fill a gap in their schedule. As for right now, it is available on iTunes, through on demand cable services, and did get a limited theatrical release.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Talk About Movies: The Truman Show (1998)

Note - I know that I said there would be a holdover from earlier this month covered this week. However, the film I had planned to cover for that was Lets Be Cops, and certain events in Missouri make the idea of nominal cops showing off their power to the detriment of civilians a lot less funny than it once might have been. - End Note.

Alo Party Peoples

Directed by Peter Weir
Written by Andrew Niccol

I don't get the appeal of reality television. That isn't meant to denounce you if you enjoy that sort of thing, but I just don't. The so called "unscripted drama" feels shallow, and to be frank, the whole setup kind of feels like stalking a person for entertainment. A feeling that is, sort of, shared by today's subject, Andrew Niccol's The Truman Show.

Cards on the table, I love this movie. I think it stands with Gattaca and Pleasantville as some of the best high concept SF that the late 1990s had to offer, and if you know me, you know that being in the company of Pleasantville is a high honor in these parts. The reason I enjoy it is beautifully simple, and also why Pleasantville is my favorite movie, it's a smart, solid and inventive screenplay with a compelling point to make, paired with a good director and good actors.

Said screenplay concerns one Truman Burbank a seemingly average man of about 30 that leads an idyllic life as an insurance salesman in the small New England town of Seahaven. However, one day when a spotlight falls from the sky labeled with the name of a star, he starts noticing things about his life that don't quite make sense. Like how his wife keeps declaring the virtues of various items to him regardless of circumstance, or that nobody ever seems to leave town. Sure enough, something is up, unbeknownst to Truman, he is constantly under surveillance, and everybody he has ever known is an actor. He has been recorded his entire life under a massive ecological dome for the sole purpose of broadcasting his daily activities to the world as entertainment.

The contradiction of a live broadcast from a place usually
considered private is intentional.

One might take that description of the film's premise and think "this is satirically taking The Real Housewives to the next extreme", and you would be right, if it weren't for the fact that it was released in 1998. I call this sort of thing "pre-ceptive allegory", when a work feels like a satire, metaphor, and/or allegory of/for something that had not yet happened when it was made. See also, _____ Instead, the film is concerned with how we think about celebrities, in the words of the late Roger Ebert "about how celebrities live in fishbowls", and how we constantly gawk at them with no regard for their privacy or personal space. In the age of TMZ, live-streaming, ubiquitous social media, and when most of the people reading this probably have a camera and/or microphone connected to the Internet on their person at any given moment, that message is even more resonant.

Peter Weir is in prime game as the director of this picture, and his stylistic decisions compliment the screenplay's themes. For example, several shots are framed in the back of a tube and/or at fixed perspectives, almost as if the audience is looking through a peep hole, because that is exactly what the fictional audience, and modern entertainment journalism, is doing.

This shot is great. It's well composed, it's creative, and it's
 a good example of how you convey ideas with pictures.

Jim Carrey is fantastic in the title role, he might seem like a bizarre choice at first, a man mostly known for showy, energetic, over the top comedic roles, and sure enough he does have his comic moments here, but he also shows real dramatic chops here. To play Truman Burbank, you need to be able to show three things, innocence, courage, and vulnerability. Innocence to portray a man that has no idea he's been made a literal public spectacle, courage to show resistance to that idea when your world is literally stacked against you, vulnerability to show the anguish of realizing that your world is stacked against you and much smaller than you thought it was, and all of them to believably show the bewilderment of coming to the place where the horizon meets the sky and hearing a voice come down from above claiming to be the creator.

Ed Harris does a fantastic job as Christof, the TV producer behind the masquerade who started out as a documentary filmmaker that did a piece on the homeless that made him horribly familiar with the pain of the real world. That is his justification for doing this to Truman, to "give him [the] chance to lead a normal life". He states that "the world, the place you [i.e. both audiences] live in, is the sick place. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 71st Academy Awards for this role, and he deserves it.

Actually, it makes a good companion piece for Pleasantville, which coincidentally came out the same year. They are both films about people in a fabricated world made by an entity that perceives said world to be a paradise, both films draw Biblical paralells, Truman is even Christof's son in a legal sense, they both have something to say about a genre of television, and they both come down on the idea that the pleasure of a full and rich life is worth the pain that comes with it.

You can not look at this shot and claim there isn't religious
symbolism in this movie.

This is high concept SF at its best, taking an outlandish premise, and exploring how people live with it. Stuff like a dedicated fan culture of the Truman Show, the struggle to hide production goofs on the set, people protesting the show because of the blatant human rights violations, it's the stuff that lesser films would spend entire scenes explaining but this one thinks the audience can accept it if presented, that is if you don't find the very premise revolting like some do. You could teach a class on this movie, or with this movie, or both.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Go Out To The Movies: The Giver (PG-13 - The Weinstein Company -1 hr, 34 mins)

Note- I realize that I didn't put out a review last week, that's my bad. The only big release, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, was a foregone conclusion. We all saw it's advertisements, we all got the red flag of Micheal Bay handling another Gen-X nostalgia property, we all knew it would be terrible, and thus there was no reason for me to cover it. Word from the professionals is that it was even worse than it looked. Also, a spoiler warning is in effect.-End Note

Alo Party Peoples.

Directed by Philip Noyce
Written by Micheal Mitnick
and Robert B. Weide

The YA trend shows no sign of stopping soon in either the books it started in or the films that sprung out of it. Just this year we have, in order of release date; Divergent, The Fault In Our Stars, today's subject The Giver, The Maze Runner in September, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 in November. That's more than the superhero movie phenomenon, which has had only four major releases this year and attracts plenty of think pieces.

Today's subject, The Giver, is based on a 1993 novel by Lois Lowry that can be thought of as the progenitor of the whole phenomenon. The Hunger Games, Twilight, John Green's entire body of work, Harry Potter. The Giver predates all of it, and alongside Enders Game, it is the foundation on which countless subsequent YA authors would build, and by build I mean take the dystopian trappings of and endlessly rehash. Except Mr. Green, who's work tends to not involve the fantastic.

For those in my audience old enough to not have read it in middle school, The Giver the book is essentially 1984 mixed with Brave New World mixed with Fahrenheit 451 the kiddie version. Hum along if you know the words, in the future after an incredibly destructive and nondescript war, a dystopic society has emerged. In this version, state run planned Communities. Every aspect of people's lives is controlled by the Council of Elders, spouses are assigned to people based on a compatibility test, and children are assigned societal roles upon turning eighteen. The way that this dystopia maintains control of the people, rules and ignorance via a policy referred to as Sameness.

The people do not know pain or pleasure, see in monochrome due to genetic engineering, are of only one race, and emotional depth has been removed in exchange for social stability. Our nominal hero is Jonas, a child who is shocked to discover that he has not been assigned a job, but has been chosen to be the Receiver of Memory, a living backup drive of all the things that the Council has excised from the people's lives. He begins attending sessions with the old Reciever and slowly discovers that the world as he has always known it isn't quite right.

When reading the book for school, I always imagined that the Communities looked like a vague amalgam of mid to late 20th Century suburbia, the kind of place and atmosphere that Pleasantville was satirizing, but here it has been replaced by stock YA dystopia setting No. 23. However, I suppose that was inevitable, it was only greenlit to cash in on the success of The Hunger Games, and thus it feels and plays out like the other recent Hunger Games cash in, Divergent.

The film is incredibly fast paced, clocking in at only 94 minutes, and often to it's detriment. I know that part of what makes the written word a unique medium is that it allows you to really get inside a character's head without bogging down your story to do so, and that usually doesn't translate well to visual media, but scenes in The Giver the movie just come and go so quickly there isn't any real weight to them. Especially one scene in particular, which I will have to spoil here in order to explain my point, you have been warned.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT...


About a year into Jonas' training, and I'm not sure of that, it's paced so quickly, he discovers a certain truth about his Community. He discovers that part of the way that they removed difference from the general population is through a Spartan style eugenics policy of performing euthanasia on aberrant births. An example of aberrant births, the lighter of a pair of identical twins, having identical people would cause too much confusion. Jonas finds out about this when he watches his father, who is a nurse, performing this activity without a second thought. In Jonas' words "They didn't remove murder, they brought it home, they just gave it a different name." The obvious allegory aside - which I don't have a problem with in principle, you should be able to convey any message you want - in The Giver the book, this scene is haunting, it has an impact, I really stopped and thought after reading it, but in the movie version, it just comes and goes, like everything else.


END SPOILERS

The acting, which might have brought this up above average, is not very good. I don't know if the younger actors were told to deliver their dialogue like this, or if they're just bad, but they talk in a manner that no living human would ever speak. Maybe it was intentional to show how unnatural the policy of Sameness is, like the uncanny valley of social orders, but that doesn't give a pass for a bad performance. The older stars fare a bit better, Jeff Bridges as the old Receiver is fine, and Meryl Streep as the Chief Elder is, while not really developed, serviceable.

When I heard that a Giver movie was happening, I was naively hopeful. I thought that there was some serious potential in this material, and it could be genuinely great, but then I saw this teaser, and thought it would end up becoming an unintentional parody of itself and the YA phenomenon. Then again, it's adapting a work that kicked off this phenomenon, so maybe it was inevitable that when it was brought to the silver screen, not that much would stand out about it anymore. Lois Lowry, the author of the book, evidently stated that dystopian fiction is passe now, and I couldn't agree more. Fans of the book will find a paint by numbers adaptation that hits all the scenes and beats it needs to but brings nothing new to the table, everyone else will find the year's second big profile Hunger Games knock off, and are better off just renting Pleasantville.

Have a nice Day.

Greg.B

Let's Talk About Movies: The Uncanny Valley

Alo Party Peoples.


Today, filmmakers can do anything. Computer effects have become advanced enough and inexpensive enough for them to create any creature, device, or world they imagine. You can make an audience feel like they are really in space with a green screen, or make a suburban town into the garden of Eden through Photoshop. In short, you can depict the impossible in a way that feels possible.

One fairly recent example of this has been motion capture animation. The art of taking an actor's motions and facial expressions, and translating them into an animated character. Sometimes, it can look almost real such as Lord of the Rings's Gollum, or Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' Caesar, you may have noticed that Andy Serkis specializes in this sort of role. Other times, attempts at this style go badly, very badly.

This is because of something called the uncanny valley effect, when a non human entity looks similar enough to a human that the inhuman parts stick out even more. For example, that creature to the right from The Adventures of Tintin. Note the dead eyes, and how the more photorealistic face to the right clashes with the more cartoonish features of the man in the bowler hat.

The term goes back to 1970, when Japanese robotics professor Mashahiro Mori published a study on it. He was notable for his work studying the emotional responses humans have to non human entities. He found that, as his machines looked more like people, actual people tended to respond more positively to it, we like it more. Until they hit a certain point, when they were almost human, but the details weren't quite up to snuff. Humans are very good at recognizing other humans, and we can tell if something isn't quite right, and when it is, we become creeped out and repulsed by it, until it looks identical to a human and we like it again. That dip, between stylized and realistic, is the uncanny valley. It's also the reason why dolls are so useful for horror, and why clowns are so often unintentionally terrifying.

This dip isn't always a bad thing, sometimes that uneasy feeling is entirely intentional. For example, CGI young Jeff Bridges in Tron: Legacy. In that film, Jeff Bridges' character has made a digital replica of himself to run his pet project reality simulator for him, but it's obsession with "creating a perfect system" goes to his head and he snaps. Here, the uncanny figure is supposed to be an imperfect copy of something real, and while it might have partially been the result of the technical limitations of the time, it works.

Why did I do an article on this subject? Well, the dark gritty reboot of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hits US theaters this weekend, and the designs of the titular creatures are right in the center of that dreaded dip in empathy. I thought it was a good jumping off point to discuss something that might have been affecting you even if you had no idea why. In a summer that has had two movies where brilliant motion capture resulted in genuine emotion on the part of the audience, either by conquering the valley or stopping just before the drop, that's unacceptable.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B

Let's Go Out To The Movies: Guardians of the Galaxy (PG-13 - Marvel/Disney - 2 hrs, 1 min)

Alo Party Peoples.

Directed by James Gunn
Written by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman

Each of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films has been a financial success, but while the idea of a live action comic style continuity spread across several disparate genres might seem to be an insane risk, or at least used to, each of it's component parts has had something to draw on as far as an audience is concerned, aside from comic fans that is.

Sure, Iron Man might have been a character that not many people outside of comics fandom had ever heard of, but the movie had Robert Downey Jr's star power to get people in seats. The Incredible Hulk had fans of the 70s' TV show, Captain America was known as a cartoonish symbol of wartime American patriotism, even Thor might have been known from Norse mythology if nothing else, and The Avengers had the novelty of seeing all those suddenly well known characters in the same movie together, and writer/director Joss Whedon's passionate following. A following that carried over to TV spin-off Agents of SHIELD, not for very long, but it was there when the pilot ran.*

Guardians of the Galaxy on the other hand, will be the first real test of whether the Marvel name alone is enough to fill a theater at this point. There aren't many name stars besides Vin Disel, who is never on screen, and maybe Chris Pratt, people usually don't see space operas in theaters unless they are named Star Wars or Trek, and the comic it's based on isn't very successful even by the standards of modern comic sales. It probably helps that it is opening basically unopposed, and that last week's action holdovers have had mixed word of mouth.

Anyways, our story concerns one Peter Quill, a man abducted by aliens as a child that has made himself into a Han Solo by way of Indiana Jones adventurer by the name of Star Lord. After he steals a particular magic rock, he finds himself the target of Ronan the Accuser, a villain that needs said artifact to destroy a planet that he has a grudge against. Quill is hunted by Ronan's assassin Gamora for the magic rock, and bounty hunters Rocket the space raccoon and Groot the tree man for a price on his head. They all end up being arrested and taken to prison where they meet Drax, a massive man with a grudge against Ronan. They decide to team up, escape, and sell the rock and split the money. Then they find it contains an Infinity Stone, an all powerful macguffin that explains why Ronan wanted it in the first place.

This is probably the most out there Marvel movie to date, abandoning the superhero sub genre entirely for a space opera in the mold of Star Wars or The Fifth Element. It accomplishes this very well courtesy of writer/director James Gunn, who I now want to handle a Star Wars picture somewhere down the line. The design of the various locations, starships, and devices are bursting with imagination, and it's easily some of the most original stuff I've seen on screen all year.

The cast is terrific, Chris Pratt does a fantastic job as Star Lord, perfectly embodying the archetype of a charismatic space outlaw. Dave Batista as Drax gives off a likable charm and his hyper literal affectation provides some of the film's funniest moments. The real standouts however, are Vin Disel and Bradley Cooper as Groot and Rocket respectively. They are, pardon the pun, marvels of voice work and motion capture, and it's amazing how much emotional attachment they get out of a raccoon and a tree man. Groot in particular becomes the emotional center of the film, Disel and the animators play him as a cross between a gentle giant and a loyal guard dog, and it is unbelievable how well this works. If there is a weak link among the main cast, it's Zoe Saldana as Gamora, but that's no fault of the actress, the script just doesn't give her much to work with.

Guardians of the Galaxy is the best kind of summer movie, putting likable characters in thrilling situations amid gorgeous 3-D justifying spectacle. It's the kind of stuff that usually doesn't come out anymore, and it's a welcome change of pace from the usual fare. Eventually, one of these things is going to not be up to snuff, but probably not for a while.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B



*Seriously though, SHIELD got a lot better after Winter Soldier came out. When it gets to DVD, just skip episodes 2 through 9 and you'll be fine.

Archivis Update: 8-1-2014

Alo Party Peoples.

Here are my plans for the next few months.

August

Marvel's space opera Guardians of the Galaxy will be covered this Sunday (I've heard really good things from the professionals), followed by either natural disaster thriller Into The Storm or restaurant drama The Hundred Foot Journey next weekend, as well as a probable essay on the uncanny valley effect. The not especially good looking YA dystopia The Giver, which evidently has a press embargo in effect until release day, the weekend of the fifteenth, and I'm probably closing out August with a couple of holdovers from the preceding month.

September

This is probably going to be a slow month for me since, as the year's blockbuster cycle closes out, and Oscar bait season starts rearing up, not much is coming out. All I could find was YA dystopia The Maze Runner on the ninteenth, and animated fantasy The Boxtrolls on the twenty sixth. That leaves two weeks with no big releases. I think it will probably be a month for some essays, the subjects of which will be revealed on release date.

October

After either another essay or something from my DVD shelf, we kick the month off with Robert Downey Jr courtroom drama The Judge. Followed by historical fantasy action romp Dracula Untold the weekend of the seventeenth. On the twenty fourth we have what my father described as "Jimmy Bond" when he saw the trailer, Kingsman: The Secret Service. 

...and that's what you can probably expect to see covered here before my most anticipated thing of the year Interstellar comes out.

Have a nice day.

Greg.B