***I wasn't happy with my first draft because it sounded rushed and didn't fully explain what I wanted to say. I edited it and this is the second draft I'm more happy with.
While most people have a certain limit to what they can watch before it starts to either gross them out or offend them, I seem to be missing that trigger. I think those sensitive to fictionalized violence should be like me and forgo their tendencies to react to explicit content from a very critically moral perspective. What I find interesting is that many liberal minded people I've witnessed watch something taboo in a movie will react to it like it's psychopathic. Shock, realism, and other uses of explicit content are utilized to further the film art form. A directors purpose is to give the audience a certain perspective they want them to live in and explicit content many times is the means to achieve this.
An example of a situation that represents this is when at school I watched the movie Happiness with some friends in my room. The movie, while not visually graphic, deals with a lot of taboos. One person in the movie is a lonely chronic masturbator, another is a pedophile that lives a normal suburban life, and another is a stalker with a few deep secrets. Some really perverted scenes take place, such as where the pedophile drugs his son's friend with roofies or when he finally confesses to his son that he's a siko. The movie is a comedy too, so everything is done with such a tone that if you understand the direction and accept it, it's a very hilarious movie. One of my friends thought the movie was funny, another was kind of apathetic, and another thought it was disgusting and that I needed to be psychologically checked.
If a movie is directed well, I think the inclusion of graphic violence, taboos, and sex, as opposed to just suggesting it, can really enhance the experience and I see no limit to what a director should be allowed. That is of course, it's all acting and no one really gets harmed, and these elements are used artistically and not exploitative. The one example of a bad exploitative movie that comes to mind is Audition. The beginning and middle of the movie is rather run of the mill, with nothing warranting an unrated rating, or even a PG-13 for that matter. Toward the end however, there is a torture scene where a man gets his foot amputated as well as pins stuck slowly through his body. I see this as exploitation because the movie was popular through word of mouth for its violence, and it's only toward the end that you see any violence, which is more than enough to make up for the rest of the movie. I felt like the anticipation of the violence is what the movie was based on, because underneath the violence is a mundane movie. Without that shallow anticipation, the movie is not thrilling and actually rather boring. Nevertheless, Audition is looked on as a cult classic, which I don't understand why.
But when a movie is well directed and violence or other taboo elements are used to make the world seem more realistic, or even surrealistic, then I welcome it. Some well done movies I like with these elements include Man Bites Dog (violence is necessary to explore the character studies), Ichi the Killer (directed by the same person that did Audition but this time he did a good job), A Clockwork Orange, Battle Royal, Milk (I know people that found the gay love scenes too disturbing to watch), World's Greatest Dad, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, and Clerks (for its language). I even enjoyed Cannibal Holocaust. While it may be one of the most graphic movies ever and has spotty acting and production, it has a great concept and the violence added very much to the message of media exploitation.
As if they're scared to accept the world they live in, the average person is easily offended by violent movies. I will separate this from being squeamish because that is a different situation. Squeamish does not necessarily relate to offended. Nor does being critical of this content from an artistic argument have anything to do with my argument, for I'm referring to being blind to statements made by explicit content just because it's explicit and not seeing it from the directors perspective. Explicit content does not always work and can often become self indulgent to the plot.
If anything I'm offended by in movies, it's the nonartistic crappy mainstream directors like Michael Bay who stereotype hoping for cheap laughs (I cant' help myself, so I'm also going to point my finger straight at Seth MacFarlane. American Dad and The Cleveland show are two of the sorriest excuses for popular broadcast TV ever). I could write another article on stereotyping, how sometimes its portrayed wittily and raises questions or is just realistic and funny, and other times it's like a minstrel mockery. There is so much more offensive out there that goes under the radar because it's given the support of loud voices, and when the loud voices oppose it then there is trouble. Even a movie such as Audition I wouldn't go and boycott as much as I dislike it. There is freedom of speech, a cliched expression but very forgetting in how true it is. The media, religion, and other watchdog groups, as well as many ordinary people, can't seem to distinguish an artistic expression from an insult.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Idea For a Story! The Start of Something Big?
I have come up with an idea for a story that I think I can get to work! I feel like I need more schooling in how to properly write a story but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. Granted, this is just the groundwork, and I'm going to need to develop so much more to get this to work. The story follows a man in his late 40s that's well educated in the arts, philosophy, and psychology. He's mostly self educated, for he looks down on the impressions people get from the biased lectures of others. He has a loathing attitude on people, believing they're inferior to him and disgusting, and those that aren't inferior he's afraid of. His loathing attitude is hidden for he also expresses appreciation for beauty and has many redeemable qualities. He's active physically, sexually, and somewhat socially even though he suffers from social anxiety. The story might be written in first-person. This smart, opinionated, insecure man is an atheist and his meaning in life is his collection of knowledge on the arts and how he's able to interpret and analyze them.
This is where my idea unfolds into a story; the man begins to loose his collected knowledge slowly and now must come to grips with the horror of living in a completely absurd world. How he begins to loose his knowledge I haven't thought up yet; maybe medically, mystically, or unexplained. The story is supposed to be existential. There's a lot more I need to think of such as other characters and tone and stuff, but this is the base for what I want my story to be about. I'm also thinking up of a back story for him as to why he feels the need to collect knowledge on art. I'm going to update when I come up with ideas that I think will work.
This is where my idea unfolds into a story; the man begins to loose his collected knowledge slowly and now must come to grips with the horror of living in a completely absurd world. How he begins to loose his knowledge I haven't thought up yet; maybe medically, mystically, or unexplained. The story is supposed to be existential. There's a lot more I need to think of such as other characters and tone and stuff, but this is the base for what I want my story to be about. I'm also thinking up of a back story for him as to why he feels the need to collect knowledge on art. I'm going to update when I come up with ideas that I think will work.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Two Great Documentaries
Since both of these films are documentaries, I decided to put them in the same post. The first film is Man on Wire. It explores the man Philippe Petit, who crossed the World Trade Center towers in 1974, on a wire (hence the title!). The second film is Street Fight. This film documents the race for mayor in Newark, New Jersey between then current mayor Sharpe James and political newbie Cory Booker. Both films are excellent, but probably as different as documentaries can be. Still, they both are achievements in what they seek to do.
My sister asked me a question about Man on Wire that the average person probably wonders as well: what's so significant about this man that he deserves his own documentary? Stumbling onto the film, the subject may seem trivial and Phillipe may come across as a seeker for 15 minutes of fame. As one begins to watch the film however, the story unfolds into different depths. The film is more of a character study of the man that pulled off the stunt than it is a documentation of how the stunt came to be.
Phillipe is an interesting human. As the film explores, he is a rebellious "bad boy" trapped inside an artists mind. As a kid, he loved to hang upside down and climb trees and do anything else peculiar or dangerous. When he got older he used his passion for danger to entertain. Phillipe is a magician, acrobat, wire walker, and overall a passionate man. He enjoys life and sees it from a different perspective than anybody else, literally; he has walked between bridges as well as Notre Dame on a wire and the view, as he explains, is something that no man besides himself will ever see. He treasures this and lives life through a different mental perspective than the average person, which is influenced by his visual perspectives. The film beautifully shoots Phillipe as he does tricks on wires, focusing on his concentration and creating the illusion that at times he's meditating on thin air.
The film uses photos, videos, and dramatizations to tell his story of crossing the World Trade Center. Besides exploring the beauty of taking risks is to life, there is also a subtle political message. Phillipe crossed the World Trade Center just as it was first opened, and not even fully completed. Through careful observations and trespassing, he was able to create a plan to sneak up on the towers at night and bypass guards. At the end, when he's finally caught, the police arrest him and send him to be psychologically examined. Even though he could have been given jail time, they drop charges if he agrees to perform a show to children. Today, Phillipe, a man that just wanted to make people happy and wonder, would have probably been labeled as a terrorist, especially considering he's a foreigner, if he attempted to do such a thing. This is not said or even really hinted in the film, but the impression comes across of how tight national security is now a days compared to the 70's and how authority was generally able to distinguish between violent acts and art.
The second film, Street Fight, has an overt political message. While Man on Wire is an artistic approach to a documentary, Street Fight uses the documentary as a tool for information (but don't be turned off, it remains just as entertaining as Man on Wire, maybe more so). It follows Cory Booker, a Yale graduate that grew up in a predominately white neighborhood in Bergen County, New Jersey. Booker has the aspiration of using his fortunate upbringing to make the world better to live in, a rarity in politicians. Pre-election, Cory decided to move into one of Newark's most dangerous projects and walk the streets to personally introduce himself to the citizens and persuade them to vote for him. His political approach is hands on and he's more about action than words to win over the people.
Cory's opponent is political powerhouse Sharpe James. His upbringing was very different from Cory's. He was born in Newark and raised by lower-class parents, living in a time where Newark might have been at an all time low. As mayor for over 30 years, he's created an illusion of beginning a Renaissance in Newark, building malls and updating housing in the downtown area so that the middle class could benefit. For 30 years, the lower class has not seen the benefits of the middle class and have been ignored. Nevertheless, through his dirty politics and lies, Sharpe has remained popular through out Newark, even to the poor black communities.
The film does a great job of truly revealing the man Sharpe is. He goes on to say racist remarks about Booker, how he's educated and light skinned and not a true black, even, out of nowhere, calling him a Jew! There was a very moving part in the film where somebody from Booker's campaign commented on this and the racism blacks have for other blacks, saying that blacks complain about being treated unfairly, but when a privileged black comes along, instead of embracing them they label them white. This is directed specifically at racist blacks and not generalized to all. There's also a part where Sharpe falsely criticizes Booker for buying the election by sending paid workers to polls instead of volunteers. One of the cameramen then sneaks on a Sharpe campaign bus and finds a group of people from Philadelphia that were paid to come to Newark and wear clothing and parade to support Sharpe James. Most of them didn't even know who Sharpe James was, let alone who they exactly were supposed to be supporting. There's so many disgusting political tricks in the movie pulled by Sharpe James that it has to be watched to believe. Booker lost the election, but became mayor in 2006, keeping his promise of reducing crime in Newark. He even gave the city their first murder free month in 44 years. Sharpe James did not seek reelection in 2006 and is currently spending time in jail for 25 counts including conspiracy and mail fraud. Talk about a happy ending.
Also, talking about how bad Newark is, I remember going there one time for an outdoor concert and was almost completely certain that something bad was going to happen to me. The security was tight and everybody looked bummy and dangerous. And this concert was in the downtown area of Newark, when Cory Booker had been in office for a year. It also didn't help that I stuck out like some kind of space alien amongst the all black, not quite as impressively dressed crowd.
My sister asked me a question about Man on Wire that the average person probably wonders as well: what's so significant about this man that he deserves his own documentary? Stumbling onto the film, the subject may seem trivial and Phillipe may come across as a seeker for 15 minutes of fame. As one begins to watch the film however, the story unfolds into different depths. The film is more of a character study of the man that pulled off the stunt than it is a documentation of how the stunt came to be.
Phillipe is an interesting human. As the film explores, he is a rebellious "bad boy" trapped inside an artists mind. As a kid, he loved to hang upside down and climb trees and do anything else peculiar or dangerous. When he got older he used his passion for danger to entertain. Phillipe is a magician, acrobat, wire walker, and overall a passionate man. He enjoys life and sees it from a different perspective than anybody else, literally; he has walked between bridges as well as Notre Dame on a wire and the view, as he explains, is something that no man besides himself will ever see. He treasures this and lives life through a different mental perspective than the average person, which is influenced by his visual perspectives. The film beautifully shoots Phillipe as he does tricks on wires, focusing on his concentration and creating the illusion that at times he's meditating on thin air.
The film uses photos, videos, and dramatizations to tell his story of crossing the World Trade Center. Besides exploring the beauty of taking risks is to life, there is also a subtle political message. Phillipe crossed the World Trade Center just as it was first opened, and not even fully completed. Through careful observations and trespassing, he was able to create a plan to sneak up on the towers at night and bypass guards. At the end, when he's finally caught, the police arrest him and send him to be psychologically examined. Even though he could have been given jail time, they drop charges if he agrees to perform a show to children. Today, Phillipe, a man that just wanted to make people happy and wonder, would have probably been labeled as a terrorist, especially considering he's a foreigner, if he attempted to do such a thing. This is not said or even really hinted in the film, but the impression comes across of how tight national security is now a days compared to the 70's and how authority was generally able to distinguish between violent acts and art.
The second film, Street Fight, has an overt political message. While Man on Wire is an artistic approach to a documentary, Street Fight uses the documentary as a tool for information (but don't be turned off, it remains just as entertaining as Man on Wire, maybe more so). It follows Cory Booker, a Yale graduate that grew up in a predominately white neighborhood in Bergen County, New Jersey. Booker has the aspiration of using his fortunate upbringing to make the world better to live in, a rarity in politicians. Pre-election, Cory decided to move into one of Newark's most dangerous projects and walk the streets to personally introduce himself to the citizens and persuade them to vote for him. His political approach is hands on and he's more about action than words to win over the people.
Cory's opponent is political powerhouse Sharpe James. His upbringing was very different from Cory's. He was born in Newark and raised by lower-class parents, living in a time where Newark might have been at an all time low. As mayor for over 30 years, he's created an illusion of beginning a Renaissance in Newark, building malls and updating housing in the downtown area so that the middle class could benefit. For 30 years, the lower class has not seen the benefits of the middle class and have been ignored. Nevertheless, through his dirty politics and lies, Sharpe has remained popular through out Newark, even to the poor black communities.
The film does a great job of truly revealing the man Sharpe is. He goes on to say racist remarks about Booker, how he's educated and light skinned and not a true black, even, out of nowhere, calling him a Jew! There was a very moving part in the film where somebody from Booker's campaign commented on this and the racism blacks have for other blacks, saying that blacks complain about being treated unfairly, but when a privileged black comes along, instead of embracing them they label them white. This is directed specifically at racist blacks and not generalized to all. There's also a part where Sharpe falsely criticizes Booker for buying the election by sending paid workers to polls instead of volunteers. One of the cameramen then sneaks on a Sharpe campaign bus and finds a group of people from Philadelphia that were paid to come to Newark and wear clothing and parade to support Sharpe James. Most of them didn't even know who Sharpe James was, let alone who they exactly were supposed to be supporting. There's so many disgusting political tricks in the movie pulled by Sharpe James that it has to be watched to believe. Booker lost the election, but became mayor in 2006, keeping his promise of reducing crime in Newark. He even gave the city their first murder free month in 44 years. Sharpe James did not seek reelection in 2006 and is currently spending time in jail for 25 counts including conspiracy and mail fraud. Talk about a happy ending.
Also, talking about how bad Newark is, I remember going there one time for an outdoor concert and was almost completely certain that something bad was going to happen to me. The security was tight and everybody looked bummy and dangerous. And this concert was in the downtown area of Newark, when Cory Booker had been in office for a year. It also didn't help that I stuck out like some kind of space alien amongst the all black, not quite as impressively dressed crowd.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Turtles Can Fly
From the point of view of a Kurdish director, Turtles Can Fly tells the story of a group of Kurdish refugee children living on their own on the Iraq-Turkey border during the eve of the US Invasion of Iraq. What's striking is that these children live in tents and make money by collecting landmines and are just as responsible as little adults. They buy weapons, fix satellites, and deliver information to adults as if they were one of them. The children are lead by a loud, but hard working boy called Satellite. Satellite is a passionate character yet his ego comes in as his small drawback. By the end of the movie though, the viewer will have a deep connection with Satellite, wondering what's in store for his future after political matters changed his life forever in a period of a few days.
Despite how emotional and well directed the movie is, there are a few quarrels I have with it. For one, the acting is not consistent and can range from moving to annoying. The son of the girl Agrin (yes, the reality of the refugee camp is that there are many tragedies such as the easily seen missing limbs from half the children to the invisible emotional scars and products of rape), who is a very little boy, is who I found most annoying. While his looks are cute, his crying and acting are not good and got on my nerves. Satellite too sometimes feels awkward, although this is made up for in certain scenes where he shows an abundance of charisma. Another problem I have is with Henkov, Satellite's rival at the beginning of the movie. I did not like that the director had him be able to predict the future, a cheap and unexplainable plot device. I was wishfully thinking through out, "maybe he was able to understand English, heard news from the television, and that's really why he could predict so much", but that didn't turn out to be the case. Then there's the ending, which I won't spoil, but I found to be too extreme. I did like the part though where Satellite turns his back on the US soldiers, loosing faith after working so hard on an empty expectation.
It seems that I wrote a lot negative on this movie, but that is only because I found it really enjoyable and couldn't ignore the few problems that held it down. It's an interesting insight into a Kurdish depiction of the American occupation of Iraq. It's not one-sided or heated and does a great job of describing the Iraqi expectation of American involvement. Whether you're interested in Turtles Can Fly from a political or dramatic context, it excels at both and is certainly worth watching.
Despite how emotional and well directed the movie is, there are a few quarrels I have with it. For one, the acting is not consistent and can range from moving to annoying. The son of the girl Agrin (yes, the reality of the refugee camp is that there are many tragedies such as the easily seen missing limbs from half the children to the invisible emotional scars and products of rape), who is a very little boy, is who I found most annoying. While his looks are cute, his crying and acting are not good and got on my nerves. Satellite too sometimes feels awkward, although this is made up for in certain scenes where he shows an abundance of charisma. Another problem I have is with Henkov, Satellite's rival at the beginning of the movie. I did not like that the director had him be able to predict the future, a cheap and unexplainable plot device. I was wishfully thinking through out, "maybe he was able to understand English, heard news from the television, and that's really why he could predict so much", but that didn't turn out to be the case. Then there's the ending, which I won't spoil, but I found to be too extreme. I did like the part though where Satellite turns his back on the US soldiers, loosing faith after working so hard on an empty expectation.
It seems that I wrote a lot negative on this movie, but that is only because I found it really enjoyable and couldn't ignore the few problems that held it down. It's an interesting insight into a Kurdish depiction of the American occupation of Iraq. It's not one-sided or heated and does a great job of describing the Iraqi expectation of American involvement. Whether you're interested in Turtles Can Fly from a political or dramatic context, it excels at both and is certainly worth watching.
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