My Birthday!Mara and I finished watching the first season of Pushing Daisies. As gifts I got some good films and some good books, a collection of old horror comics, especially.
For my birthday, I got the gift of legal rights from the govt. And also, draft registration (woo fucking hoo). I've often marveled at the silliness of ascribing all people equal legal rights at the arbitrary age of 18, when many people mature either earlier or later than that. Why is a common 18-year old more capable of signing away his life than a bright (or stupid) 17-year-old? Why do I get the right to vote at the same time as some of my peers, who may remain apolitical (or worse, generally ignorant) for decades to come?
The gift that I got from our culture that day was really induction into the great stupid constructed machine that is society built to venerate things that don't matter and worship false idols. (I watched Fight Club on Saturday)
But what I also got was Transformers
Now, I don't mean the toys
(well, actually I did get one or two... or three, but)
I mean the summer blockbuster movie-going experience!
At midnight that night, we went and saw the first showing of Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen on a 2400 square-foot screen.
--- (my thoughts on transformers 2... WARNING! may turn into a rant)
Set two years after the events of the first film, Sam Witwicky (Shia Lebouf) is about to go to college, when... suddenly crazy shit happens with giant robots again!
My reaction to the film can best be summed up by a quote I found on line.
"That movie was absolutely retarded...
...
AND I LOVED EVERY SECOND OF IT!"
Truly, Revenge of the fallen is a really dumb, ridiculous, and ludicrously EPIC and AWESOME film.
There's something about giant robots fighting... cars zooming around... giant robot space mummies coming to blow up the sun (oops, a spoiler there)... girls acting sexy for no reason... and things exploding... that all makes the logical center of the brain turn off and the 'cool' center of it turn on.
And, actually. I thought RoTF was leaps and bounds better than the first Transformers movie. The over-the-top storyline suited the subject matter better and there was a whole lot of character interaction on behalf of the robots (as opposed to ZILCH like we had in the first one).
The events that took place (fights, choreography) were legitimately really cool, and even the most stretched parts of the plot make some sense (if you rationalize it for long enough).
My major problem with the RoTF is the lack of good storytelling techniques: The abrupt ending, the parts that seem very funky and non-transformers-y (a few certain non-transforming Decepticons that seem stolen from other movie series), the characters that were put in there only for cheap laughs and raunchy jokes (you'll know them when you see them) and the way it sort of clung to a sort of brutal, "realistic" filmmaking style that didn't fit with what was happening and what people were saying. I just thought that it wasn't a very well-directed film (the budget was huge, and the craft was spectacular, but the actual ideas... meh).
but Michael Bay doesn't make films... he makes BaySplosions.
It's a well-known fact.
Just ask him.
I would love nothing better than to direct my own transformers film sometime in the future (that's what film school is good for). AT least I would like to see a reboot in about ten years (like they did with batman and the hulk) that is better artistically speaking. I would like to see Transformers become stylistically more "comic-book like," with some more melodrama, less frenetic action, but also more real storytelling. When I think of good films that stayed connected to an over-the-top and cartoonish origin, I think of Sam Raimi (who made the EVIL DEAD films) and his take on Spider-Man; I also think of Iron Man.
I see Transformers being a good cross between Men in Black, the Iron Giant, and Spider-Man... with maybe some Godzilla thrown in there for good measure.
What Bay's produced for us is a by-the-numbers mish-mash of the blockbuster genre. Created to make profit, but not lasting thoughts or impressions.
Stylistically, bay's franchise is a combination of Terminator, Armageddon, Aliens, some Indiana Jones, and Stargate (for number 2). All mixed together with the cheap teen humor of old drive-in flicks, like "my mother the car" and raunchy college humor comedies like "American Pie"...
Take all this and throw it together into the form of a car commercial.
These elements are kind of like drugs, fun, cheap, dirty, and they make the dealers (car dealers in this case) a lot of dough.
And it's a shame, because I think Transformers has a lot of strong philosophical points, I even have a book about it. and those don't get touched on when you're just trying to rape the viewers' eyes with exciting things.
Um... so yeah.
--- end of tangent.
A huge bowl of coffee Ice Cream minutes before the film ensured that I will not have a normal sleep schedule for many moons.
(I got to bed at 7:00 am on Wednesday)
I look forward to straightening out, though. Since I need the work time that daylight hours afford me to finish my horror movie. I saw the summer from June 6th to the 23rd as my break time, and the rest of the summer is now to be my time for working (not at a paying job, but at improving myself and the world through art) and adventuring!
Content
Devious Comments
You know, being the absolute dork that I am, I walked out of the midnight showing of Transformers, and all I could thing was "Avatar comes out next summer. Avatar comes out next summer! AVATAR COMES OUT NEXT SUMMER!!!" NNEEEEEEE oh ho ho ho!~
I'm terribly excited, if you couldn't tell. I think M. Night Shamalyan (sorry if I horribly misspelled that...) shall do the series some justice...
As much as I love Avatar, I'm still saddened that most of what the theater industry making "blasts from the past", or popular literary cult classics into film form...alas. But I suppose that each era of art had sort of its mundane, its overused, and dried-out tactics--making it prime for defining it school book style...but still.
--
I find the two biggest similarities between dogs and underwear to be thus:
The less there is, the more expensive it is.
that is about how coherent i felt after watching that movie, anyway.
--
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
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Deep underground, there was a boy who was dead
so it exceeded my expectations.
--
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
if that is what they were going for, it WORKED alsdlashaslj.
--
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
but, seriously.
Yes indeed. I loved Avatar, and I LOVE M. Night Shayamalan. I got really excited when I saw that trailer.
Though I would also say that for the most part, it does kind of stink that Hollywood is reaching out to get their hands on everyone else's stories. (and remember that it isn't just endemic to our time period, adaptations have been everywhere in film since its inception... the first film was an adaptation. The 40's and 50's saw more bad adaptations than I choose to remember or imagine)
On the other hand, when it is done right, the film adaptations can truly encapsulate the tone and spirit of the original materials (A short list of these good films would include The Addams Family films, Harry Potter 4, Lord of the Rings, King Kong, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Spider-Man, X-men 1 and 2, Iron Man, Speed Racer, Narnia films, Charlotte's Web, Chris Nolan's Batmans... and also, Babe, The silence of the Lambs, and Fight Club.)
This is rare, but it happens.
It boils down to the fact that whoever directs the film needs to be a skilled storyteller and a good artist and they need to have love (not just respect) for the source material.
I think M. Night Shayamalan is a great storyteller and a good director (The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable are two of the best films I've ever seen, and while The Happening was pretty dumb, it still scared the shit out of me).
He seems to love the source material well enough... because it is his first adaptation ever, and because he watched the show often with his daughters.
But we'll really have to see.
I think that "The Last Air Bender" has lots and lots of potential to be a great film in its own right. Since there's a whole epic global constructed culture that they could draw stories from and expand upon, there are allegories in there about industrialization, there's a pretty unique philosophy that could influence the real world.
Anyway, like I said. If an adaptation is to be pulled off correctly, the director needs to be a good storyteller, he needs artistic creativity, he needs to care about the source material, he needs to preserve the spirit and philosophy of the original property, and the film needs to stand on its own as a single artwork/story.
That's why I was a little bit irked by Transformers.
--
Deep underground, there was a boy who was dead
and feel free to call me.
--
Deep underground, there was a boy who was dead
and yes! hey, have you seen master and commander?
--
A Freudian slip is when you say one thing but mean your mother.
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