Farewell Weinstein...I thought I knew ye well?

Great little op-ed in the L.A. Times today about the creative demise of the Weinstein brothers, a.k.a. Harvey Weinstein a.k.a. the svengali behind every big Miramax Oscar campaign of the 90's. So, is he past his peak? Has he lost his ability to find the hidden gems inside the piles of cubic zirconia? I have to confess I had no idea he was behind many of the doozies that have come out recently (Grindhouse included) and I'm a little puzzled about how someone who "discovered" Fernando Merielles is also behind Hannibal Rising? It sounds like he's developing the media mogul disorder, which is also commonly referred to as Rupert Murdoch syndrome. Look people, just because you have enough money and clout to enter a lot of different media channels it doesn't mean you should or that you will succeed.

Ah, but this is a farewell so I turn to the best homage to Weinstein. I'd have to say it was the Entourage episode at Sundance where we get to see Harvey "Weingard" huff and puff his way around Park City crushing all of the Hollywood detrius that dares to cross his path (*I tried to find a clip of this on youtube, but to no avail...HBO pirates need to get on that*) By now Weinstein has been profiled to death so we know he's vicious, power hungry, and has a pretty impeccable eye when it comes to provocative films. So, I raise my glass of water to you Harvey--thanks for a decade of good movies and even better back lot intrigue.

Making Lemonade (out of badass, stylish lemons)

In homage to Rekha's classic post on movie trailers, I thought I'd turn the retrospective toward this tv spot advertising the dvd release of Smokin' Aces. I was a bit puzzled by the way the New York Times review by A.O. Scott was used to promote the film. I wondered, "Did the NYT really say that? Do the forces behind Smokin' Aces take such comments as positive? WTF?" Being somewhat familiar (I think) with Scott's style, it didn't seem to me that "Blam! Blam! Expletive. Expletive. FBI! Plot twist! Expletive. Roll credits" could possibly be complimentary. Something smelled fishy. I looked up the review.

The spot cleverly does not quote a few of Scott's longer descriptions of the film, the most choice of which describes the film as a "Viagra suppository for compulsive action fetishists and a movie that may not only be dumb in itself, but also the cause of dumbness in others." Ouch. Another of my favorite gems: "The editing scheme, jumping from one set of characters to another, with cute juxtapositions of image or dialogue, is annoyingly literal-minded, and the climactic surprise manages to be both predictable and preposterous." Double ouch.

I raise this in light of some of the blog discussions I've had (here and here) regarding "bad taste" (or "good taste") in film. Or maybe just my taste. And I think the way this spot uses the NYT review speaks to the frustration I've been struggling to articulate. Clearly the filmmakers behind Smokin' Aces weren't ashamed of their poor NYT review; rather, they're highlighting it in a coy, ironic attempt to say "we aren't fazed by such effete, precious reviews of our raucous thrill ride! Not only do we not care what you think, we don't think our fans will either!"

And they're probably right. And this wouldn't be a problem if I wasn't an effete and precious film critic.

So, has anyone actually seen Smokin' Aces?

Doling out the credits.

L--
I think this is a really important disucssion to have--who do you give credit to when a film is working, and what do you do when one falls apart? I know we discussed this recently in relation to The Namesake, a film with a brilliant director behind it and a few good actors as well, and yet it didn't work. Who would I blame for this? Well, I know the source material is good because I've read it, but when fiction doesn't "translate" well into film is that the fault of the screenplay writer? And let's just say it is, shouldn't we hold Nair responsible for not reigning the writer in if they were off in mood, tempo, etc? Because bottom line one job the director definitely DOES have is to be a CEO of sorts, keeping people plugging away at their smaller roles in order to make sure the larger machine of movie making chugs along. Now, having said that I have a hard time blaming Nair for this, and that's purely because of my own highly subjective reasons for liking her work. I don't want to believe she's capable of taking good material and turning it into something fairly mediocre.

I will go one step further and say that I do value the "auteur" filmmaker over the one trick pony, and that's because your artistic capabilities have to be so much stronger to do that. I don't think being the "CEO" of a film is easy, but those are skills you can learn whereas the artistic ones are much more precious to me, and those are the ones you have to execute well in order to be an auteur.

As sort of a corollary I also wonder where the critic falls in this interpretive frame? I mean it's no secret that the critic is subjective and undoubtedly has directors/actors/writers that they perfer over others, but regardless of who the movie is targeted to they have to find a larger way to speak to it because their reader won't strictly fit the target demographic (unless you're the New Yorker, in which case you exude elitism and a contrarian nature--here's looking at you David Denby)? So, for example how does someone like Kenneth Turan look at a niche film like Volver? Well, some might argue that we all have the ability to step outside the narrow confines of our own critical inquiries, but actually I don't think that's true. I think we end up with informal genres like "chick flicks" because the critic, like anyone has a limited world view, and can't always conceive of certain tropes and characterization without reverting to simplistic categories. So, what I'm wondering is if everything is slippery and subjective on what ground can the confident blogger speak?

~R

Retro...reply!

Rekha,

Thanks for kicking off the grand retrospective. This is a great idea, not just because I enjoy being self-congratulatory and having an excuse to talk about myself and my "work", but also because this is the time in the semester (you remember semesters, right?) when I get very narrow, very purpose-driven, and can't see the metaphorical forest for the metaphorical trees. It's a nice opportunity to broaden my view and bit and think about what this space has done and has the potential to do in the future. But first, to the past.

I think that the blogging we've done here and the conversations that our blogging has provoked have really forced me to consider who the "author" of a film really is. I see this question as tightly linked to your question of "what a film a film is doing"--you're really interested in the way the film is operating within culture, and I'm sort of focusing on the agent(s) responsible for the production of the film. Which is not to say I have any desire to get bogged down in the disputed territory of authorial intention, but just that so often in film the creative origin falls along a spectrum ranging from incredibly diffuse to a singular vision. Looking at where a particular film falls along that spectrum, and why, is fascinating to me.

We had a discussion in the film class last year about the MLA convention of citing the director as the author of a film, and it really opened a whole wide realm of questions for me as to who is responsible for what in the creation of a film. This discussion, of course, needs to be situated within particular production systems (Hollywood), genres, and the discrete filmmakers themselves, but still think it's worth discussion. For example, there was the high-tension dispute over the title of "auteur" between the creative forces behind Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel, director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga. Both men, in my estimation, have a huge claims for their responsibility in the quality of these films, yet somehow the egotastic notion of the Enlightenment individual gets in the way of calling collaboration what it is. It's collaboration. Which isn't to say that some filmmakers aren't digging collaborating--there are certainly some doing that like crazy: just look at the interminable list of producers and directors for Little Miss Sunshine. But maybe that's just a different kind of film.

Then there are the Altmans, the Almodovars, and the Lynches who I genuinely believe execute a singular vision. Yes, they have help. Yes, there are cinematographers, ADs, and script advisers who certainly have creative influence. But if we're talking about vision, foresight, or innovation, there really are some filmmakers--properly not called directors, since I believe that director is actually a quite limited job--who genuinely conceive and execute films that are entirely their own.

I don't have a point, really. Just, I guess, that I don't value one type of filmmaking or filmmaker over another, but I'm fascinated by the ways we've examined who does what when making film.

Retro...what?

Okay, hit the rewind button for a second. One year ago: Was I watching movies? Check. Did I babble endlessly to students about the merits of Bottle Rocket? Check. Was everyone pondering the future of movie theaters as people flocked in droves to dvd's and interweb piracy? Check. So, you might be asking yourself what is this retrospective about? Well, dear reader we are about one year in to the start of this blogging project, and what has changed is that thetwocents exists, and for that I am really happy.

So, to kick off this one year trip down memory lane I'm directing my thoughts to co-blogger extraordinaire Leslie. Here goes.

L--

If there's one very general thing I could say about this past year in movies and blogging it would be how much I have raised my awareness of "what a movie is doing", and I think that operates on many levels. There's what the movie is actually doing (physical actions, plot lines, written words being expressed), there is what the movie is doing to us (how do we interpret and interact with what unfolds on the screen), and then there's that sticky space in between what the director wants the movie to "do", or what the writer perceived the job of the movie to "be". All of this is a lengthy way of saying movies don't exist in one realm, and by talking about, reading about it, and blogging about it I'm starting to realize how many ways there are for us to think about movies. It's endless and amazing, and it's what makes commentary tracks on dvd's all the more enticing. Finally some answers! I'm thinking in particular of the media blitz surrounding Tarantino and Rodriguez's Grindhouse double feature. Although I'm willing to give these movies VERY little credit I do believe that the director's ideas and potentially ironic distance from the exploitation movies they loved will play with audiences in an interesting way. After all there will be people who go and see it purely for the objects it claims to deride at a safe cool distance. So, what does Grindhouse mean to Tarantino and Rodriguez versus me versus the 18-34 year old male that I'm confident they are targeting? I guess I'll just leave this thought with the fact that I'm glad diversity exists in all spaces, I really am. I also think Grindhouse looks like the dumbest excuse ever for two overgrown kids to go crazy with digital effects in order to recreate some nostalgia stained "authentic" American cinema.

So, what's on your blogging mind these days?

--R

Bonding With the Female Gaze

So, I've had the flu the last week or so, and have therefore spent a number of afternoons and evenings splayed out on the ol' couch. Rather than watch reruns of The Hills or What Not To Wear, I've been watching Casino Royale. Over and over and over.

The process goes something like this: I turn on the movie, watch for about 20 minutes, fall asleep for a few hours, wake up, restart the movie around the point where I fell asleep, watch for about 20 minutes, fall asleep. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The effect of this lucid dreaming, repetitious, Bond-infused sleep is that I've had some pretty deep thoughts about this movie. Here it is people, my epiphany: Casino Royale (and especially Martin Cambell's direction) recasts the male gaze. The respective gazes of the camera, the audience, and the characters in the film are all firmly placed on the body of James Bond throughout the film.

Now, I'm not the first to point out that Daniel Craig is man candy. This is well documented.

But what Casino Royale does (IMHO) that is such a break from other Bond films, and other American films for that matter, is replace the sexualized "Bond Girl" with a sexualized Bond himself. At every turn in the film, we as viewers are asked to consider Bond's body; from the gruesome torture scene which involves is manly bits to the attention the script and camera pay to the superior tailoring of his suits, the film demands that we consider Bond's physical presence.

Craig's body also persistently upstages the body of Bond Girl Eva Green. In the scene where Bond finds Vesper crying in her ball gown in the shower, his shirt is the article of clothing that becomes translucent as it's soaked by the water, revealing his skin beneath. In the "love scenes" (a troubling euphemism if ever there was one), his body is not only more plainly visible than hers, but it is also clearly featured by the cameras and lighting as the sexualized presence in the scene.

And, of course, we are all familiar with the image of a dripping-wet Craig emerging from the ocean in his teeny blue bathing suit. For many of us, it recalls Ursula Andress' famous "Dr. No Bikini" and later Halle Berry's homage to Andress in the 2002 Bond film Die Another Day. The Bond Girl in the bikini has become a cultural signpost, telling us who to desire and for which attributes. Which is why I am so intent on giving the filmmakers responsible for Casino Royale their due.

It's no accident that in a film that has worked so deliberately to focus on the physical, sexual presence of its principal character would mimic the iconic image of the Bond bathing suit scene. This film is not only actively shifting its gaze, but telling us as viewers to shift ours as well. As the origin story of the character of James Bond, Casino Royale reminds us throughout that Bond is not the polished, suave super-spy we've come to know embodied in the slimmer, more refined incarnations of Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan. This is the gauche, graceless, all-thumbs Bond. This is Daniel Craig. And so in order to convince us that Bond is green and untested, his body has been pushed to the forefront of this film: hypersexualized, animalized, and virile.