on intellectual guilt over watching Avatar

So I was reading through this article recently, with a mixture of cynical agreement and guilt. The sort of person this Avatar-heretic was talking to was probably the sort of person I am. The sort of person who sniffs at movies built entirely out of CG cotton candy and tough talk. The sort of person who tries to grasp the nuances and symbology behind characters and dialogue. The sort of person who believes they can spot an artist of quality when they see an obscure, once-unknown movie. And still, this sort of person bought tickets to Avatar, saw it, enjoyed themselves shamelessly and saved the intellectual guilt for after the entire experience was over. Well, I'm still saving that intellectual guilt for something to feel truly ashamed over. I'm not guilty about Avatar.

It can't be denied that this piece is a nice way to put all the hype about Avatar in perspective. I saw it, and I couldn't say I didn't enjoy it. It was an awesome visual spectacle with little in the way of story to recommend it. I can see how this can be a problem for people who believe movies are 95% about dialogue, characterization, acting, message and narrative. Unfortunately, the box-office reality is that different movies pull different viewers in for different things. Die Hard was not about symbology or complex narrative. The Incredibles was not about meaningful dialogue and questions that explored existential dilemmas (at least, not on its face). Similarly, Moon, which was one of the best-acted movies I've seen recently, was not about visual spectacle. The movie-snob tend to forgive such movies because they usually mix in some scraps from each of these factors to combine visual spectacle with some of the more refined ingredients we've come to expect most movies to contain today. The movie-snob would find it much,  much harder to forgive something like Avatar for a simple reason. Avatar was little more than a glorified rollercoaster ride. But what a ride. It was massive fun, on a purely visual level. It managed to achieve one of the primary objectives of the commercial movie (wish-fulfillment) entirely through the visual spectrum. James Cameron achieved what he promised to achieve. He created a visually incredible world and then placed the viewer within that world through the magic of his revolutionary use of 3D. From a technical perspective, that was an amazing achievement. Story, dialogue, complex characterization be damned. This movie was not made as a showcase for any of these things. James Cameron wanted to be the Lumiere Bros of 3D. And if he gets recognition, he should get recognition for little more than this (nevertheless pretty amazing) achievement.*

I suppose the reaction that most moviegoers have to Avatar is the sort of reaction people must have had on watching a Lumiere brothers production in the 1900s. There would have been tons of open-mouthed fascination over... what exacly? People leaving a factory, gardening, babies eating food, a sea bath. There was no reason to feel intellectual guilt on the enjoyment of such things at the time because there was no such thing as a tradition of storytelling through cinema. It was, at the time, a purely technical achievement. The ideas of using characters as visual symbols, adding nuance to dialogue and acting, hell, even creating a story for the purely visual experience to roll on were slowly perfected over the next century and a half, and have now become de rigeur in even the most blatant market-pandering movie that thrown out of modern cinema factories. This may explain why, when a movie is released as nothing more than a showcase of technical talent and such a movie receives massive critical and popular acclaim and gigantic box-office takings , so much intellectual guilt is thrown into its enjoyment. It really shouldn't happen though. And I'm not wasting mine for what I knew, from the start, would be pure visual spectacle. Hell, that's the only reason I watch a movie in the theatre anymore. If I want to appreciate a movie for its storytelling, dialogue, acting or symbology, I'd have better luck pulling it off the net and watching it in the peace and comfort of my home.

* - Of course, there's the Oscar problem, which asks a completely different question. If I had time to waste on this, I would, but I don't, so I wont, except to say that the Oscars have been bullshit for a long, long time and I cannot fathom how a movie which is such blatant visual eye-candy (albeit tasty eye candy) can be nominated for best picture or best direction. With the other categories I have no beef. Film-editing, Art Direction and Cinematography have always been categories which fall somewhere between technical and artistic excellence, and a nomination in those areas is hardly a surprise. Sound-editing, mixing and visual-effects are not (though music is) and I wish Avatar all the luck in the world for a win in those categories.

An Open Letter to DM Theatrics Regarding Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: Please Youtube This!

This is a letter to DM Theatrics, who are planning to put up a production of 2 Gentlemen of Lebowski sometime soon.

from: ViralFish
to: press@dm-theatrics.com
subject: An Open Letter to DM Theatrics Regarding Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: Please Youtube This!



Ok, this is clearly not a press request. However, its the only contact email I had for the fine gentlepeople who were magnanimous enough to stage a production of Two Gentlemen of Lebowski. Therefore, if you are one of these gentlepeople who are capable of making decisions about this, please consider my proposal. If you are not, and know one of these gentlepeople (whew, political correctness takes more effort to type), please forward this to them. Thank you.


Guys,

As a follower of the Dude and as an unabashed supporter of the Bard and all Bardly performances, I would so have loved to attend this event. My chagrin at being unable to attend is aggravated by the fact that I was in New York until a few months ago, and have returned recently to my native India. It is in this spirit that I present to you a modest proposal:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE YOUTUBE THIS!!!

You may think there are a thousand reasons why you shouldn't do this but I have presented a brief analysis of those that I can fathom:

1. It will kill demand for seats in the actual theatre

No it wont. Under no circumstances will it do so. Nuh uh. Not a chance.

The Big Lebowski is a movie that has attained cult status (No, I'm not kidding at all, look it up on wikipedia). This means that its fanbase may not encompass the bloated ranks of your average 'Twilight' movie. In fact, to all appearances, its fans may not appear even half as fanatical as your average neo-vampire pseudogoth who applies fake blood on her wrists 'for Edward' every day. However, that is because the followers of the Dude are not fans. They are disciples. They have internalised the Dude in body and spirit.

For every moron who looks at a q-tip and says 'What is this?' there is a Dude waiting to say 'obviously you are not a golfer'.
For every tool who screams out at us: 'The bums lost! The bums will always lose!", there is a Dude who is willing to put his hands up, say 'fuck it' and saunter out with his pick of any rug in the house.
For every bigot, chauvinist, fanatic and fundamentalist, there is a Dude who will stand up to them and say 'That's just, like, your opinion man.'

These people will come. They will prefer to come because, for a follower of the Dude, watching an enactment of Two Gentlemen of Lebowski is the same experience as Christmas mass is to a practicing Catholic: You can try to watch it on tv, but thats just not the same as mouthing the lines together, enjoying a feeling of communal brotherhood with your fellow follower or enjoying tasty snacks mid-performance (ok that last one was in bad taste).

They may not try to pay, because, come on man, the Dude didn't teach us to pay (except in the form of dubious checks for sixty nine cents). You may find a few more followers trying to sneak in through backstage than through the front of the theater. You may even find a few people disguised as security men who suddenly attempt to sidle into an extra seat. However, you will fill your seats. And with a few intelligent ushers, I'm sure almost all of them will be paid for. So thats not something you have to worry about.


3. It will be a pain in the ass to do.

Oh come on man, it will not. Now you're just being plain lazy. Which is cool, and very understandable. But if you guys dont have the time and energy to do it, just ask around man. I will bet you that someone will do it, probably for a pretty nominal fee, possibly for free. And it will be worth it, for reasons that I am outlining below.

3. It will kill demand for a video
You may already have plans to record this show and sell it. If you do, I'm sure you'll make some cash. But lets look at this realistically. There's 2 reasons why you may not get to make much cash out of this if youre only going to put out a paid performance.

a. Your audience comprises followers of the Dude. Their preferred means of access to anything is 'free', after which comes 'cheap'. And if there's one other thing a follower of the Dude likes, its sticking it to the man, low risk style. Put these two factors together and for every 1 dvd you sell, there will be 10 Dudes watching a pixellated low-res bootleg video of your show. As a guy who is interested in intellectual property, I can tell you that that's actually not such a bad thing. In this day and age, for every 1 copy of a blockbusterr dvd sold, there's 1 copy being pirated. But pirated copies tend to build demand for the original, and in the long run, can actually feed sales for the original work. (I should probably link to something here but I'm on a roll. Just take my word for it.)

b. However, this model applies well to blockbusters and big-studio productions because they have the cash to publicise this stuff endlessly, so even if 1 million guys pirate their movies, another 1 million have heard enough about them to go buy the original on dvd. However, you guys do not have that luxury. You do not have big budgets and you do not have enough clout to publicise something like this by conventional means.
What you do have is the power of the followers.
The Dude is very much an internet icon, being the sort of person who appeals to people who spend a lot of time giggling-high on something in front of a computer. Put out a youtube clip of 2 Gentlemen, and these people will transmit that information online faster than 2 girls and 1 keyboard cat. After that, you've got eyeballs, which is the biggest currency in the world today, more so, I imagine, for a group of people whose revenues are dependent on people seeing and hearing them perform. Let your imagination run wild.

c. And you can be sure some of these guys will be youtubing this stuff anyway. Sure, you can try as hard as you can to make sure no one takes grainy, horrible, low-res cellphone videos of the show, but in the end, someones going to put that shit on youtube. And I am going to watch it. And feel terrible about the fact that I missed this wonderful performance and all I get is a minute and a half of some nutjob who decided to record the show in the middle of an epileptic fit.

On the other hand, if you put that stuff on youtube yourself, you will have instantaneous coverage. The Dude is beloved all over the world, and if you combine the love of the Dude with the love of the Bard, you have a recipe for viral success! People will watch, and while watching, they may actually love it enough to want to get a DVD of your performance.

Also, a theatrical performance is, by its nature, ephemeral. A moment of beauty, then gone forever, save in the minds of those fortunate enough to witness it. A youtube video is not usually considered beautiful. But it is a record, one that hopefully may be perused by generations after ours, in an effort to understand the creature that was early 21st century man. Please man, leave them with something better to see than '2 Girls 1 Cup'.

You may have reasons other than this, but I just ran out of energy. Let me just end this appeal to your higher (and lower) conscience by imploring you,

in the name of the Dude and the Bard,

to consider and act upon the reasons I have offered.

ViralFish

P.S. I call this an open request because I may post in on my blog, ViralFish. If you are concerned about this, worry not, as the 6 people who follow my blog will agree with me wholeheartedly, while at the same time supporting your noble endeavour 100%.

Cartoon Crickets.

Chirp chirp.

Staring at this expansive white space, I can almost hear the cartoon crickets in my cobwebby brain, reminding me that I seem to have nothing to say. I saw a movie yesterday where a man stared at his face in the mirror and said "while there is an idea of a Patrick Bateman, some kind of abstraction, there is no real me: only an entity, something illusory... I simply am not there." Staring at this screen, I feel somehow similar, as if, confronted by the infinite blank voidness of this screen, all the pictures and smells and violent impulses that constitute me have fled, and there is nothing in there except cartoon crickets. I think I suffer from screen fright. Every night I open a new document, to pour my life out into. Once I'm seated in front of this beautiful, slightly dust marred expanse of potential verbal wizardry, everything disappears. I stare at the screen, stonefaced, waiting for something important to happen, or some sound other than cartoon crickets. Then I close the window and play Half Life 2.

Wait a second, those are real crickets.

God's Final Test

aIn the course of my unemployed trawling on the internet over the course of the last few years I have come across some intensely passionate and profound writing. For some strange reason a good amount of it seems to revolve around bad movies. It’s hard to match the vitriol and sheer visual breadth exuded by such masters of movie hating as Mr. Cranky or the people over at SomethingAwful. However, I for the most part have a relatively high pain threshold when it comes to watching movies. This has enabled me to withstand even the likes of such cinematic greats as Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.
Everyone faces their nemesis at some point or the other. I met mine yesterday, in the form of a hasty decision to watch “My Super Ex Girlfriend” at PVR Saket, for a hundred and fifty a seat, at 11:30 in the night. I did feel this strange premonition before I was walking through those fateful theatre doors. I had a feeling I’d made a big mistake somewhere. It may have been Uma Thurman’s drawn emaciated death’s head face attempting to look peppy, or her costume which made her look like a tricked out undead dominatrix who’d flunked S&M school for looking too cute, or the constant urge to punch Luke Wilson’s life-sized poster in the crotch, but I just had a feeling.
I’m not going to bother explaining the plot to you. I feel “explaining” anything in this movie may insult your intelligence. Barebones: Thurman play blonde bombshell superhero G-Girl (wtf does G mean? One of the many unsolved mysteries in the course of this complex and subtle movie) who fights crime when she isn’t a mild-mannered bespectacled brunette art curator in a New York Museum. Luke Wilson is the average Joe project manager who doesn’t get much luck with girls and decides that since he is so overwhelmingly desperate, the emaciated body of Uma Thurman will have to do. It is therefore, in the traditional manner that he sets off the resulting bizarre chain of events. He is ably assisted in his endeavours by *, who plays his relationship-guru-from-hell best friend. Unfortunately, what he assumes will be a simple one or two night stand turns into a boiling passionate romance (at least as far as G-Girl is concerned) with the skeleton revealing her secret identity. Wilson, who becomes a little perturbed about Uma’s increasing tendency to smash his car windows and her attempts to tear off his manhood in her lovemaking frenzy decides to break it off. This is where the movie is supposed to flap its soiled, bedraggled wings and fly a bit. Unfortunately it doesn’t. It hops about, spreads its wings and flops facedown in the proverbial box office trashcan it was dragged out of. Uma, in her Shakti-esque fury, boils Luke’s goldfish, almost destroys his apartment, turns his car into a celestial object and lasers the word “Dick” onto his forehead. The sad, pathetic attempt at upping the pace is spoiled by a boring and utterly chemistryless relationship blooming between Luke and * (who, by the way, seems to have gotten into the habit of playing the pathetic waif with inner strength since Scary Movie). The only cheery bit in the movie was the part where the enraged G-Girl tosses a great white shark onto the recently consummated starry-eyed colleagues. I was hoping the shark would remove the offending Wilson brother’s head (or at least his manhood, since that’s what started this whole sorry mess of a movie off anyway). Alas, this was not to be. The conniving two-timer survives and the noble great white (who really has done nothing wrong, really) ends up a sorry mess on the pavement. After this, the movie continues to crawl on to its inevitable finale, where the director (in what he must have considered an attempt to add some class to the show) introduces a full-on super powered cat-fight between the skeleton and the waif. However, the pathetic loser saves the day by introducing the skeleton to the man who truly loves her, her long-time arch-nemesis, supervillian and high-school sweetheart, Professor Bedlam. It was at this point that my subconscious began hurling insults at the movie screen of its own volition, and began screaming “Please make it stop! Please make it stop!” at my eyes. It is important to point out here that somewhere during the intermission I realised that I was fighting a strong impulse to kill the people who had come to the movie with me. And the people in the seats behind me who must have been hired by the theatre administration as live canned laughter.
This is supposed to be a smart New York movie with snappy lines filled with wit and cynical insight. Instead, * the character installed in the movie specifically for the purpose of funny one-liners gives us “I hear you have invaded the female nation and are spreading your democracy”. Of course, he was not the only person responsible for bad one-liners. Our hero the great thinking penis also gets in a few good ones. When faced with skeleton girls almost naked form the obviously dedicated architect goes “Wow! Now that’s what I call structural integrity”. I cannot think of a single intelligent thing said in the course of the entire movie, except for “Maybe we should all kill ourselves”. Oh wait, that wasn’t in the movie. It may have been wishful thinking.
In conclusion, I do not believe that this is merely some bad movie. I believe that this movie is a warning from God. God sent this movie here as a test to us all. It is important that we realise this and heed his message. If enough people go see this movie and it becomes any sort of success, God will kill us all in waves of fire and great white sharks, and the characters in this movie will all come back as the four horsemen of the apocalypse. So do your part to save the world. Stand outside the theatres in picket lines and beg and implore all around you to not watch this movie. If required, use your live bodies as barriers to prevent people from entering the theatre. You may lose a limb or the life of a dear one, but trust me, in the final analysis, it’s worth it and you would have done your part to save humanity.

Bollywood SWAT

http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=2974A bunch of Americans sitting around commenting on Bollywood and Lollywood (Lahore!) movie posters. The posters are incredible. The comments are moderately funny, but I can see something like them coming out of a conversation with a few of my more mentally traumatised friends. Must visit, at least for the posters. I want a poster of the lion killer guy framed in my bathroom. Anyone know where I can get one?

The Return of the Things

somthing I find hard to understand about people. The automatic rejection of any theme which professes to deal with the larger-than-life. Larger than life images, larger that life themes, larger than life worlds. Of course, if a medium does'nt outright profess to be larger thatn life, but manages to stretch the boundaries of imagination and reality in its own establishment way, noone seems to care. This is how you end up with scenarios where people dismiss fantasy and sience fiction and comics as kid's fare, but are more than happy to see Clive Cussler's "Dirk Pitt" rappell off an airplane, on to a zeppelin, kill all the neo nazis on the zeppelin with a tuning fork, then jump off and detonate the zeppelin with abovementioned tuning fork.
Well, watch out Dirk Boy, fantasy and science fiction are making a comeback. The Lord of the Rings movies and the Matrix trilogy (okay, please dont make me go into the actual quality of the latter) are making people open up their eyes to the inherent metaphor within the "absurd". I mean, after seeing the matrix, people are actually starting to ask, "what if?". Some of them are even trying philosophy. This is why, leaving aside the actual quality of the matrix trilogy, I mark it down as something of an influence.
As for comics, as you can see, most of the marvel heroes are at last getting their turn on the limelight (and also, in the case of Daredevil, getting totally raped by it), and raking in huge bucks by the look of it. And soon , it'll be the turn of Dark Horse's Hellboy to enter the fray. Now, if there's one movie I've been meaning to watch, it would be Hellboy. What a brilliant concept, the antichrist as the saviour of mankind, ragnarok betrayed, metaphor extreme.

Of course, it is possible that all this commercialisation of fantasy and science fiction will destroy its earlier purity and beauty and pulpify it for mass consumption (as one of my friends argues about everything from computer games to art, basically doesnt like sharing). I dont deny the possibility that the return to public consumption for fantasy/sf could change its shape, but who are the elite to say what shape it should take? the purpose of fantasy/sf is to provide to use the world, unadulterated and undiluted, through its own fractured lens, so we may see the beauty and the horror of that which happens around us with that much clearer an eye.
If that be the strange fruit of this union, then so be it borne.



pop philosophy? maybe. But its still food for thought.

I FOUND IT I FOUND IT I FOUND IT!!!

Ok, first, a little history... about 5 years ago, in the 12th standard, I used to love visiting this place called MrCranky's. It was this amazing site on the net where this guy let loose all over all the movies ever made. Good or bad, it didnt matter to him. If you think what he did to American History X was bad (snd I thought that was a pretty GOOD movie), you have to see what he did to Spice World. All in all, i totally forgot about the plae till a month ago. The sad part is, that by then i'd totally forgotten the name of the place, leading me to try any number of insane and dangerous combinations to get where i needed. (sample:Mr. Nasty. [Ok, i'm not hlinking this site cause its porn and maybe its not a good idea to go that way right now.]).
But finally, i have found it, in all its caustic glory. Please, lets all give a low bow to Mr. Cranky's

Neo Bill Gates

I'm just wondering if Bill Gates has any ability to appreciate irony whatsoever. Here are the two head honchos of the one of the most widely reviled (even by people who use their stuff) companies in the world, and THEY'RE talking about rebelling against the Evil Empire. It's Beautiful. It's like casting Caesar and Brutus to play Asterix and Obelix against the Romans. I wish i could link you guys to a photo, cause its too hilarious for words. Maybe i will later, but still, here's the story morning glory, and i think its a laugh riot. Check out Agent Bill Smith