Oscar Movies
Sadly over the last couple years I have not been able to see as many of the Oscar nominated movies as I’d like. In fact prior to last week I hadn’t seen ANY of this years nominees. Then in the span of about 6 days I saw two of them. I was struck by them both, their similarities and their very profound differences.
The two that I saw were Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life” and the black and white mostly silent film “The Artist”. There was no plan to seeing these two virtually back to back but it created an interesting comparison.
Both movies are homages to the art of movie making. And both are brilliantly executed. At that point however the two movies take off in radically different directions.
The Tree of Life is obscure, symbol filled, visually stunning and did I mention obscure? This is more of contemplation of opposing forces in life than a traditional movie. The movie that keeps springing to mind for me as a comparison is Kubrick’s “2001 - A Space Odyssey”. Except that 2001 actually has a story that you can mostly follow. After 2 plus hours of watching the movie you’ll have an experience at the movies you’ll never forget. And quite possibly never understand.
On the other hand “The Artist” pays tribute to the early days of the movies, the days before sound when actors had completely different challenges in bringing their stories to the big screen. It is the story of a silent movie star faced with the arrival of talkies and his star being eclipsed by an actor that he had discovered and launched. Plenty of people will hear “black and white” and “silent” and decide not to see the movie. That would be a shame. The cast is exceptional and they bring the story very much alive on the screen. There are in fact two very short sections with audio other than the traditional music score. If you love the movies especially the early days of the industry you should make this a must see. If you know nothing about those days you should see it to better understand and love the movies of today. Some folks are amazed this one got a nod for Best Movie but it’s nice to see a movie that takes a risk to tell the story.
Will either one claim the Oscar? Hard to say. Tree of Life probably has the better chance because it can be seen as intellectual rather than popular choice. But Oscar ends up in some peculiar hands some years so we’ll have to wait and see. Still time for me to see a few more nominees too.
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The Dark Side of George Lucas
Well the day long expected has arrived and now all good people must make their decision and choose their sides. Will you remain on the side of good, virtue and righteousness or will you descend to the Dark Side? There can be no middle ground when it comes to the latest money grab by George Lucas in the Star Wars franchise. Where do you stand on the new 3-D version of Episode 1?
Not surprisingly this is a hot button topic among the faithful of the Jedi cult. But it’s not simply the question of 3-D or even the question of whether or not George Lucas has completely slipped a gear with a never ending refurbishment of his signature series. It never is with the Star Wars faithful.
Let’s begin with the return of the argument around Jar Jar Binks. Episode 1 returns the almost universally despised alien character. Jar Jar is accused of being a racist stereotype, profoundly annoying and just unforgivably stupid. Then you add in the controversy of whether Han Solo shot first in the bar scene where he kills the character Greedo. Yes, I know that’s in a completely different movie but you need to understand that any time a new version is released ALL the theological arguments immediately are revived. Lucas maintains that Han didn’t shoot first. Which is just patently ridiculous. And I can’t believe we are still having this conversation. But that’s George’s fault as well.
For me the choice is clear. I will not be seeing the newest version of these movies. The second trilogy is decidedly the weaker anyway so it’s a somewhat simpler decision. I’ll even grant the Episode 1 contains scenes that might be elevated by 3-D (the racing scenes spring instantly to mind). The problem is that if we keep showing up and shelling out our Galactic Credits to watch his latest demented meddlings he’ll just keep on doing it. And we must do everything we can to make him stop.
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Tweet Reviews
Caught this story on NPR the other day and the more I thought about the more I struggled with it. Spin Magazine, one of the premier music magazines of the day, has announced that they intend to review around 15 hundred new music releases in 2012 in the form of a Tweet. This apparently will include traditional album releases, EPs and even Hip Hop mix tapes. The idea is that the old music review has outlived its usefulness and needs to be upgraded. Given some of the truly awful offerings I’ve read over the last 4 decades I probably can’t argue that. Music reviews can be arbitrary and didactic. Maybe that comes from too many years in radio but I’ve had my fill of poly-syllabic polemics extolling the extended artistic values of some band who made noises that one person in a thousand might want to listen to for more than a minute. I always preferred reviews that were more descriptive than those that tried to pass judgement on the artistic merits.
But can we really get any kind of value from a review that is constrained to just 140 characters? Remember it’s 140 CHARACTERS not words. So spaces between words count right along with letters. To be honest Spin editor Christopher Weingarten sounded awfully smug as he described doing about 240 extended reviews this year compared to 6 times that many Tweet reviews. Pretty clearly he has decided that this is what’s cool whether it’s useful or not. Of course Weingarten apparently also happily proclaims himself a troll. A troll is generally regarded as the lowest form of online virtual life.
It all smacks of hipster posing to me. I will be the first to acknowledge that a huge percentage of musical releases each year are trash. Yet out of that musical mosh pit emerges some great bands each year as they grow in their art. My question is will they get the hearing they may need to succeed if we are reduced review as blurb. In the end most of us make our minds up on music based on what we hear rather than what we read. But once upon a time a very long time ago music criticism was an art form and some of its practitioners were musically knowledgeable AND wonderful writers. The folks at Spin claim that this new review format will make them the go to source for music information. I think it’s far more likely that by offering less information they might just write themselves completely out of this story.
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