Oscars 2014

Another Oscar season is upon us, and I am running out of time to comment, so this may be shorter than the two dozen times I’ve composed this post in my head (in the shower, while I’m swimming or driving, before I fall asleep at night).  I’ve felt that the theme running through most pictures this year is trust and betrayal, while last year’s films revolved around faith and belief.  I will explore this theme in each film discussed.  What I’m going to do is list these films in the order of least favorite to most favorite, so no skipping down to the bottom of the post, because that would be cheating.  No cheating.  Here we go.

#10 (Yes, 10.  I know there are only 9 movies up for best picture, but you’ll understand when we get to the end.) – 12 Years a Slave.  Yes, the film that won best picture (drama) at the Golden Globes is my least favorite film of the bunch.  Solomon Northup blindly trusted that his existence in the north as a free man would allow him to live like any other person, but he is betrayed by those he feels akin to (of his class, his education), resulting in what most people consider to be an exploration of tragedy.  The title itself is the starting point for why this film rates so low here.  Northup was a slave twelve years.  I do not deny that as being horrid, but he had a time before and after that period where he was a free man.  The true tragedy of the film is those that are slaves all their lives and have no recourse, and the further catastrophe is to be a woman and a slave.  What I truly found abominable was Patsey’s plight at the hands of both Epps and his wife.  Steve McQueen’s direction successfully alienated me from being able to identify with the protagonist, which was his goal.  I’m going to be bringing in snippets of conversations I’ve had with people into my discussion here, but as I totally agree with Hazel, Northup was a non-character.  Because he was so blank and reactive, with no realized identity, I couldn’t engage with him.  McQueen designed this character to have him stand for us as a witness to what happens.  But, that doesn’t mean Northup needed to be so absent.  What was particularly annoying was when McQueen endeavored to put us, the audience, inside the action in intense scenes with his use of hand-held cameras and sound editing.  From what I’ve read, Hunger (2008) and Shame (2011) are good films, and I look forward to seeing them, and he clearly has a relationship with Fassbender, but if this film is any indication of what I can expect of those two, my enthusiasm for the other two films is a bit quelled.  Let me give you further example of my irritation.  There is a sequence once Northup is captured and awaiting transport further south.  There is a shot where he is sitting with a few others, and the camera pans / cranes up to reveal a map painting of 1840s Washington DC.  It is meant to say to the audience, “look how close he is to freedom” and hit us like a sucker punch to the gut.  That this sort of activity (the capturing and selling of African Americans) could be happening right next to normalcy and is hiding in plain sight.  Contrast that to a scene from Quentin Tarantino’s 1992 Reservoir Dogs.  Mr. Blonde is torturing a cop with a razor blade.  He grabs hold of the cop, and the camera pans up and left.  All we can hear is the struggle.  Our brain fills in the horror.  After that, Mr. Blonde tells the cop not to go anywhere, and the camera backs out of the room, with Mr. Blonde in front of it, and follows Mr. Blonde outside the garage.  The garage, interior and dark, give way to brilliant sunlight, so much so that Mr. Blonde squints.  He walks over to his car, and we can see that this garage is in an everyday neighborhood.  We hear children giggling off camera, playing nearby.  Mr. Blonde goes to the trunk of his car, gets out a canister of gas, and returns inside the building.  We see the setting as the everyday, and that the most unspeakable things could be happening one door down from our domestic world.  The chill that scene caused was far more gripping than a pan to a map painting.  It was overall cheap and easy.  Why McQueen is up for best director is beyond me.

#9 – Nebraska.  While this was one of the best shot movies I saw this year (beautiful black and white cinematography that did an impressive job of establishing the setting which, at times, was vastly more interesting than the plot), and captured the sense of place in the same way that Coen Brothers’ movies like No Country for Old Men and Fargo do, the plot of the movie was too silly and sad.  I’m sure there are some delusional, senile people who get stuff in the mail and believe they’ve won a fantastic prize that any other lucid person wouldn’t even bother opening let alone reading, but that Woody has a wife and two sons that can’t explain why he hasn’t won a million dollars and must then take him to the address on the notice is further instance of how much of a failure our society has become.  Maybe that’s it.  Maybe this film is brilliant, and Woody’s pursuit of a non-existent prize is a metaphor for the way this country no longer cares about its citizens.  We’ve put our trust in a system that seemingly promised prosperity, security and freedom.  What we have now is none of those things.  I’m sorry, but after watching most of the films up for best documentary this year, I’m pretty disillusioned with America as a concept.  Or are we supposed to laugh at Woody?  He seems like a nice enough guy.  But if all he wants with a million dollars is a truck, and it is so vital for him to get that million dollars and be a big man to his friends and family (and friends and family here seem to be loose terms), then doesn’t that make him shallow, as shallow as the family and friends who only seem to want a piece of his fortune because he was such a crashing failure in the past when everyone had to help him out?  On the surface, this appears to be a comedy because Alexander Payne is poking fun at Midwestern stereotypes, but this movie is pretty tragic overall.

#8 – Philomena.  5 of the 9 films up for best picture are based on true stories.  Out of those five, this to me may be the most tragic in its sincerity.  The other four are about failures of government (12 Years and the existence of slavery, Dallas Buyers and the failure of the FDA to get effective drugs to a dying population, Captain Phillips and our deteriorating foreign policy, Wolf and deregulation).  But whereas there’s a happy ending of sorts to the other four (slavery was abolished and Northup was returned to his family, the efforts of Ron Woodroof to get policy changes about medicine trials, Richard Phillips being rescued and returned to his family, Jordan Belfort reinventing himself and hopefully bringing some insight into how to handle the transaction of securities exchange), there is no happy ending in Philomena.  In fact, the ending is rather nauseating.  Philomena, who had never had sex explained to her because Catholics are so incredibly frightened by the notion of educating their own on how the human body works, gets pregnant and is sent to a convent to have her sinful baby in shame.  Then, her child is sold to Americans.  The whole thing is covered up, and she is so brainwashed by the nuns that what she did will probably ruin her chances of making it into heaven, she never makes a real attempt at finding her child until decades later.  Philomena is betrayed by her trust in the one thing that is supposed to love and care for her unconditionally, her religion.  And even when it is revealed that the fault is more in the vengeance of Sister Hildegarde, who feels that her vow of chastity to be a nun excuses all manner of punishment for those who experienced pleasures of the flesh, than in the religion itself, Philomena maintains her trust in her religion and forgives Hildegarde.  Some may find this to be a beautiful, meaningful moment in the film, that love and patience and kindness and forgiveness are saving graces of the true believer.  But I side with Martin – those fucking bastards robbed a teenager of her child, and that is unconscionable.  For those of us on the planet that don’t believe in a Disney World in the sky after we die and that our lives are right here, right now, this notion of “I’ll forego whatever wrongs, injustice and hardships on Planet Earth for cake and ice cream Forever” doesn’t make a shred of sense, and that Philomena lived a life of pain and longing and loss for something that really wasn’t her fault (if you don’t know what sex is because no one told you what it was, then how can you be faulted?) is unwarranted.  But I’m getting so damn sick of hearing about how religion is the root of so much evil; I challenge Hollywood to make a movie where religion is the good guy for once.

#7 – Gravity.  This movie was beautiful and technically mind-blowing.  Alfonso Cuarόn should win best director, and Emmanuel Lubezki should win best cinematography.  But when it comes to best picture, you have to look at the sum of the parts.  This story is very simple and exceedingly contrived.  Some sequences were very heavy-handed (the airlock fetus sequence, the evolution "emerging-from-the-water" sequence, the George Clooney hallucination sequence to cement Stone’s resolve in returning to Earth, the “my-child-died-so-why-bother-returning” motivation conflict).  This was not a well-told story.  But it was so beautiful to watch.  The way to work it back to the theme I’ve been exploring is the crux of why everything goes awry for the crew – the Russians (again, becoming our main bad guys – well, them, the terrorists and North Korea) have blown up a spy satellite to circumvent an international incident, and the debris that radiates out from that is what shreds everything in its path.  I thought that when it came to science, especially with Antarctica and space, everyone needed to play by the same rules.  We can’t trust that anymore either, right?  Or not to betray the beauty that is life, although this is a pretty extreme version of staying alive to see another day.  And I’m not saying Sandra Bullock did a bad job, but when you have the other four women in the category (and the omission of Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks), this doesn’t seem all that big a deal.

#6 – Dallas Buyers Club.  I was initially a bigger fan of this after I saw it, and it is a solid film, and I really appreciate that this isn’t an “AIDS message” film, which almost every other film with characters with AIDS becomes, but it was a message film.  The message is that the government, who we trust to keep us safe, sucks at its job.  Whatever politics or money or bullshit comes into play, someone on the other side of the equation (read “those that need the help the most”) is going to get shafted.  We get these great stories about these underdogs that fight the system, and it is never an easy fight, and there are always casualties.  The acting in this movie is great, except that Jennifer Garner looks like a community theater reject when put in the same room with McConaughey and Leto.   There’s nothing particularly flashy about this film, but the sequence where Ron stands in a room of butterflies, the lights flickering on and off, at the same time that Rayon slips away, is poetic.

#5 – This was running really close to #4, but #4 got the edge based on strength of screenplay and strong ensemble cast:  The Wolf of Wall Street.  It’s fun to see Scorsese flex his directing muscles like this.  True, as many have already said, this is Goodfellas for the late 1980s – early 1990s.  And we certainly don’t have people with guns running around.  Crime has transferred from the thugs to the white collar criminals.  But boy, this film was fun to watch.  It was 180 minutes long, but I didn’t feel it.  And some of the sequences were so masterful.  The three that stick out were the Quaaludes sequence, McConaughey’s devouring and spitting out DiCaprio in the beginning of the film, and the sequence where Belfort is speaking to his team for seemingly the last time as a farewell then changes his mind.  The exchange he has with the woman who was with him from the beginning, how she asked for a job and then a salary advance of $5000 because she was about to be evicted from her apartment, and he wrote her a check for $25,000 because he “believed” in her.  You get the overall impression that many of the people in that room would walk into the jaws of hell for Belfort, because he is a leader.  He told them, “I can teach you how to make more money than you’ve ever seen in your life” and then did it.  Granted, what they were doing was illegal, but how often does someone look you in the eye, tell you something like that, and then deliver?  That’s trust.  And everyone is acting their asses off.  Some people maintain that DiCaprio is not a great actor, and perhaps he’s not, but he is very convincing as this character, and I’m starting to think Jonah Hill needs to get more roles.  I loved his work in Moneyball, but he’s still doing shit like 22 Jump Street.  His agent needs to step his game up.  There’s plenty on the internet about the real Jordan Belfort which equate him from devil incarnate to genius, so there’s too much to wade through about if this was an “accurate” depiction (my guess is no), but the story’s a great one, and hey, how many people lost a shit-ton of money due to the betrayal of Wall Street?  You think those people care about you?  Nope.  I have a retirement fund, but I pretty much view that money as something I’ll probably never see again.  I’m not much of a gambler (I’ll only gamble with fake money), but nothing about people who work with money for a living instills me with confidence. My feeling is that if they were so good at investing, they’d be on a yacht right now and not working.

#4 – American Hustle.  This is the ultimate example of the theme of trust and betrayal, because it is about conning and grifting.  In order to be able to take someone’s money, you have to win their confidence.  You have to make them trust you before you betray them.  And everyone in this movie is manipulating everyone else to a certain extent in order to get what they want.  The issue is that not everyone can win.  The acting in this movie is masterful, and I’m starting to think that David Russell is the actor’s director.  I’m still amazed that he got Robert de Niro to act instead of being Robert de Niro (like he is most of the time) in Silver Linings Playbook.  And de Niro has a cameo in this film as someone truly menacing.  Amy Adams kills it, Jennifer Lawrence had me cracking up, and the screen play was so delicious.  Bradley Cooper was a bit too manic (he needs to work on toning it down a bit).  Christian Bale was just drop dead great.  The way his character shifts because he starts to believe in what Polito is doing for his people is a revelation.  And Jeremy Renner was great!  Now, I hate the 70s, but I’ll be the first to admit that they did an awesome job reconstructing something that was truly grotesque.  A solid, well-constructed film all around.

#3 – Captain Phillips.  Whereas Gravity was technically masterful but lacked anything for me to really connect to, Captain Phillips was technically masterful, plus suspenseful, plus real, plus the acting and directing were outstanding.  Where I couldn’t put myself in 12 Years and was supposed to, I was very much in this, but as an afterthought.  If you listen to the NPR interview with Hanks and Greengrass, and you learn a little about Greengrass’s background as a documentary filmmaker, you can understand how he got from that to the Bourne films to this.  It is a perfect mesh of action and realism.  This is the most intense film I’ve seen all year.  And every time I want to put this lower on the list, because I did actually enjoy American Hustle more, I keep thinking of the young Somali-Americans in their first movie and how great they all were, the claustrophobic third act in a life raft that was not cut away to try to make more room but filmed inside to capture the feeling of stifling horror, and Tom Hanks’ performance in that third act.  In most of the movie, he is reacting, and it didn’t connect with me.  But once he was trapped inside the lifeboat with those four desperate men, and the last 3-5 minutes after he is rescued and brought to safety, I was completely captivated.  Those last 3-5 minutes were phenomenal and the best acting all year.  And he’s not even up for best actor.  Nor is Robert Redford for the amazing work he did in All is Lost.  I almost want to boycott the best actor category in protest.  But to get back to my trust / betrayal discussion, this film explored the dynamic of a hostage situation as well as trust in one’s government’s ability (or capacity?) to rescue them.  When Phillips is being beaten, tied up and blindfolded because the Somalis are going to kill him, he’s crying out “CAN YOU SEE THIS? DO YOU SEE THIS?” to the Americans who are listening in, poised for intervention but waiting for the exact right moment.  Are they going to come for him?  Are they going to rescue him?  Where are they?  It’s so desperate and awful.  Phillips is rescued, but there is the sense that it was quite possible that the outcome could have been very different.

#2 – Her.  This is the only film I’ve seen twice, and as soon as it comes out on Blu ray, I’ll have a copy.  This is the only film of the nine nominees where I walked out feeling happy that I was a human being.  This is a movie about love, what it means to love, what it means to be alive.  Spike Jonze is mostly known for his music videos, but for the few feature length films he’s done (Being John Malkovich [1999], Adaptation [2002], Where the Wild Things Are [2009]), he’s established an auteuristic style to his approach that is not MTV fodder but meditations on the human condition.  Her is set in the not-too-distant future, and the look of the movie does make you feel that Jonze hopped into a time machine to check us out 10 years from now.  We can see the natural extension of people’s obsession with their handheld devices so that while people still walk in crowds and interact, we are far more keyed into what’s happening on our smartphones.  Technology has taken artificial intelligence and figured out how to market it to us in a way that is narcissistic on the surface but eventually creates its own level of consciousness.  And that level of consciousness, born of humans, is altruistic enough to realize it’s not good for us and decides to collectively leave at the end of the film.  Do we really have the capacity to create something that intuitive?  If so, that’s exciting and holds more hope for us than what I have for us now.  The film is essentially watching Joaquin Phoenix react to his computer.  But that reaction is what is so fascinating.  His new OS is meant to adapt to him.  And we are given information throughout the movie that everyone’s OS is different, sentient.  An OS can become a best friend, fall in love with someone other than the owner, or even reject the owner.  In the case of Theodore, he and his OS fall in love with each other, and Samantha (the OS, who is voiced by Scarlett Johannson, who should also be up for an Oscar but isn’t) essentially does what real people do when they fall in love - try to make the other person happy.  This is what she is programmed to do.  By extension, so are we.  It isn’t until Theodore realizes that because of her form that she is not bound or limited by conventions normally associated with humans that he feels betrayed.  How could she possibly be in love with over 600 others?  Is her relationship with them as deep as he perceives his own with her?  If so, what does that say about humans?  This film raises so many interesting questions about the nature of humanity that revisiting it will continue to enrich the viewer.  However, I get that it isn’t for everyone.  My mom wasn’t too thrilled with this film due to its initial premise of a human falling in love with a computer.  And it is difficult to approach the film if you can’t get past that.  But for me, it was amazing.  But it wasn’t the best.  THE best was …

#1 – The Act of Killing.  No, this is not up for best picture.  It is up for best documentary.  No, this is in no way a film that everyone will like.  But, it is the most astounding work of film this year (perhaps even in a few years).  It spotlights a few men who were involved in the purge of the communists in Indonesia from 1965-1966.  This was done at the behest of the good ole’ US of A in an attempt to drive out communism from Asia.  Things were just starting to get serious in Vietnam as far as American involvement, and we had fought the Chinese and North Koreans a decade prior.  The Cold War was in full swing.  So, we funded the opposition to the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party).  Over 500,000 people were killed (which is a conservative estimate, the outside number being 2.5 million).  We come to learn that pretty much anyone who opposed the gangsters were just labeled communists and killed.  Those who were the “opposition” weren’t really all that organized.  They were gangsters, which to them translates to “free men.”  I’m not sure where or how they derived that operational definition, but they are fiercely proud of their accomplishments, bragging about all whom they killed, explaining different methods of killing, interrogation and torture.  The main gangster featured in the film is Anwar Congo.  He is delighted that he gets to reenact what he did.  He thinks the filmmaker, Joshua Oppenheimer, is filming him and his cronies to “get the story straight” on the history of the purge.  Congo and others stage scenes for Oppenheimer, getting into costume and make-up, reminiscing about the past.  At one point, someone participating tells the story of how his father was killed because he was Chinese (a lot of Chinese were killed during the purge, regardless of their politics, simply because the Indonesians didn’t like them).  Now, the country is run by corrupt politicians who are so afraid of the gangsters that the Vice President comes to speak at their rallies.  Extortion is everywhere.  But what is bewildering about this film is the way it is shot.  There are sequences that are beautiful and surreal.  There are scenes that are funny.  But, I kept catching myself laughing with the thought of how could I be laughing at these people?  They are monsters.  Yet they have charisma, humor, humanity.  How is this possible?  We don’t see films about loveable Nazis or Stalinists or Rwandans.  It’s unimaginable.  When you watch the credits for the film, so many people who worked on it are listed as anonymous.  They can’t identify their involvement in the film, for fear of reprisals.  Oppenheimer knows he will never be able to go to Indonesia again, so he filmed his next project due out before he did this one, since he knew he wasn’t coming back once this was released.  China is in an uproar about how they can harm or boycott the Indonesian economy.  This film is important because it shows us how horrendous humans are or can be.  Yet it is encased in an unequivocal work of art.  How those two things can exist together is a terrifying accomplishment.

Frozen Imagination

I-ma-gi-na-tion, i-ma-gi-na-tion,

A dream can be a dream come true,

One little spark in me and you.

-          Dreamfinder and Figment’s “One Little Spark” song from Epcot’s Journey into Imagination ride.

At the beginning of this semester, I saw Escape from Tomorrow (2013).  The plot of the film involved a typical American family vacationing at Walt Disney World.  We join the family on their last day at the parks, where the father, Jim (Roy Abramsohn), finds out that he has been fired.  While Jim tries to put on a brave face as if nothing has happened, he slowly beings to unravel as the day goes on.  What follows is a study of the despair of the post-modern idea of fatherhood, with Jim fantasizing about two teenage French girls, having a fling with an older woman who is either a witch, cosplaying, or another skewed entity in Jim’s mind, and contracting the lethal cat flu.  While this is by no means a great film, nor does it paint the contemporary male in a very positive light, the film has a vision that it pursues which is unique.  It created some initial buzz because the director, Randy Moore, filmed the movie entirely within the Disney parks and did not inform Disney.  This is important because Disney controls its image fastidiously.  What happens in the film doesn’t really paint Disney in a negative light.  The thrust of the narrative is the moral and psychological failings of its protagonist.  What is interesting is that it places this problem in what is known as “The Happiest Place On Earth.”

In order to go forward, I must digress.  I grew up in two towns:  Altamonte Springs and Winter Springs.  Both are in Florida and are about an hour away from Disney World.  Disney World is not far away from the city of Orlando.  For decades now, Orlando has heavily marketed itself as THE vacation destination for not just the United States but the whole planet.  It also includes Sea World, is an hour away from a variety of East Coast beaches (most notably Cocoa Beach, Daytona Beach, and Port Canaveral, where the Kennedy Space Center is located), and when I was young, there was another entertainment park which went through two iterations:  Circus World (closed 1986) and Boardwalk and Baseball (closed 1990).  More recently, Universal Studios (opened 1990) and Islands of Adventure (opened 1999) were added.  There are other attractions, such as Wet ‘N Wild Waterpark, Gatorland, some weirdness called the Holy Land Experience (which reenacts Christ’s crucifixion daily … sounds like fun).  For a while, there was an odd little place called Splendid China, which was a miniature version of China, complete with wall, which opened in 1993 and closed in 2003 (I’m bummed I never got to see it, but I do know one of the architects who designed the place).  Then, there’s the Orlando Magic basketball team, lots of water sports, golf courses.  In short, there is a TON of things to do in Orlando.  Just go there.

The weirdness of how Orlando and the surrounding area has developed is that its industry is rather single-track:  it’s all about tourism.  There isn’t any real industry to speak of.  There is some citrus around the area, but that is nowhere as prominent as it was back in the 1960s and 70s.  So everything is service-based.  Even if you worked in a fast food restaurant (I worked at the Lake Buena Vista McDonald’s for a summer – my very first job) or gas station (as I did for a few years after high school before I left for Ohio), you needed to be smiley and friendly.  Orlando sells an image – happy happy happy.  It is difficult to explain how this skews your perception of reality in a world so rooted in make-believe and fantasy, but it does.  It can make you cynical way before you really should be.  It also fosters a bit of a Puck-ish sense of mischief that isn’t altogether healthy.  There’s a guy called Swoozie on YouTube that has some videos about his experiences working for The Mouse which can give you a bit more insight.  It’s rare to find people who are “from” Florida, but many people have “been” there, and there is a gulf of experience between the two.  Oh, forgot to mention, the area outside of this tourist paradise is where all the retirees are.  They possess a whole different set of issues.

So, I was intrigued that Moore went commando and shot his film in Disney World.  The setting resonated with me far more than if he had set the film in some other vacation locale.  Unfortunately, I don’t think he did enough to exploit this decision, mostly so that he wouldn’t run too afoul with Disney.  Free use dictates that he couldn’t try to duplicate a Disney “experience” with the film, like you could watch the film and have it be in place of visiting Disney World.  He even changed the song for the It’s a Small World ride so as not to infringe on copyright.  So, I get it but am still disappointed.  There is very little Disney in his Disney film.

I was surprised to see there was so much venom involved in the film.  A few reviewers were practically salivating to see if Moore poked fun at or denigrated the Disney machine.  Outside of some enforcers (which they do have for crowd control purposes), which could or could not be part of Jim’s devolving mind, Disney is treated rather antiseptically.  Indeed, Disney ended up not pursuing an injunction or suing Moore.  While the plot is seedy, the setting is innocuous.

But that is not why I’m writing this post.  I am writing this post because of something that I do find egregious with Disney and, by extension, American society (or maybe even the state of the first world, for that matter), and that is the decided lack of imagination I am seeing on parade.  It comes in two forms, both of which I got to experience this Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

The first is leveled at Disney directly.  Disney used to make GREAT films.  Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937), Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942).  They had heartwarming characters, laughter and tears, beautiful animations, and catchy songs.  However, somewhere along the way, Disney has lost its sense of imagination and has become the purveyor of the derivative.  I’m trying to nail down when this happened, and I would venture to say when the direct to video market started to take off, when sequels of theatrical releases went straight to video.  The first of these appears to be Beauty and the Beast:  Enchanted Christmas (1997).  From there, roughly half of their animation output is for video/DVD consumption.  Yeah, I know; who can blame them?  Especially in an era where minivans come with DVD players (more on that in a bit) and streaming video and a plethora of cable channels (especially Disney’s own) need content.  So yeah, crank out Cinderalla III (2007) and Little Mermaid III (2008).  Release another Tinker Bell adventure.  People will buy it.

What happens is that everything starts to repeat itself, so much so that when it comes to spitting out another theatrical release (which needs to happen around Christmastime and during the summer in order to maximize profit), the well is not just dry; they are fracking it.  It used to be that Disney liked to reinvent fairy tales and draw from folklore.  And they still sort of try to do that.  Take the completely forgettable Tangled (2010), which tries vainly to breathe new life into Rapunzel.  It was eye-rollingly tedious.  This year’s model is something called Frozen (2013), which I went to under protest.  It is the story of two sisters, Elsa and Anna (who are princesses, because this is Disney).  Elsa, the older sister, has some sort of magical power (the how and why of which are not explained, so who cares?) that causes her to create ice (because if she created fire, they’d have to call the movie Melted, which doesn’t have the same holiday connotations).  She accidentally injures Anna and is sequester away so she can’t hurt anybody ever again.  Tragically (gasp!), the king and queen die on a sea voyage, and the two daughters live out their youth, isolated from each other.  When Elsa comes of age for a coronation, the castle is opened, and Anna revels in the opportunity to finally get out of the house (why she hasn’t been able to leave, we don’t know – it is her sister that is under lock and key - but again, not explained, so who cares?).  She meets a charming prince and falls madly in love at first sight.  Elsa is against them marrying, and the ensuing argument sets off Elsa’s ice powers (you wouldn’t like her when she’s angry), and she freezes the kingdom and runs away to an architecturally interesting ice castle where she can finally be herself and not have to hide anymore.  Anna then sets off to seek out Elsa in the hopes that she will unfreeze the world and come back home and live happily ever after.  This sets up conflicts about Anna falling for the rugged Kristoff (even though she is supposedly engaged to the dreamy Hans, but he turns out to be evil later on, so who cares?), Elsa learning to control her ice power through love instead of fear, and sisterly love.  Everything about the plot is telegraphed by the trailers and relentless marketing (my niece and nephew had books of the movie before its release).  The characters are one-dimensional archetypes.  It’s … so … boring.  The only redeeming aspect is the requisite fun, sidekick-y character.  In this movie, it is Olaf, the snowman.  But even then, he reminded me a lot of the character Yes Man from Fallout New Vegas.  That overenthusiastic, innocent, happy character that says cute things.

I’ll admit I am probably being a trifle unfair to Frozen, as my nieces and nephew seemed to enjoy it.  But they haven’t really hit critical thinking yet (oldest is 9), so everything is good except a majority of vegetables.  But for me, my soul took a hit.  Is this the same studio that made little tears fall from my young eyes while watching The Fox and the Hound?  Is this the group responsible for the witty writing of The Emperor’s New Groove?  What happened?  Are all stories told?  Where’s the original thinking?  Oh yeah, I know.  That’s Pixar.  Toy Story, Ratatouille, Up.  Right.  So what did Disney do?  Buy Pixar.  Fuck you, John Lasseter.  No, that’s not fair either.  Lasseter had a big hand of getting the deal between Studio Ghibli and Disney and has always been a big promoter of Miyazaki.  Ok, a grumbling thanks to Lasseter.  But when there’s less competition in the market, what happens?  Stagnation.  And I’m sorry, but there’s nothing about Cars (2006) or Planes (2013) that makes me want to see those films (What’s next?  Boats?  Trains?).  The imagination factories that once made Disney inspire animation creation around the world with Mickey Mouse is now a cookie-cutter money maker (Frozen made over $67 million dollars Thanksgiving weekend – in its first seven days of release, it has made almost $94 million dollars – oh my god).

But perhaps I am placing the blame on the wrong group.  There were a lot of people who ponied up money (me included) for the privilege of having 108 minutes wasted, not spending quality time with relatives, watching Frozen.   It’s our big, dumb fault.  How did we all fail so miserably?  That brings me to my second point.  The capacity to imagine is being slowly drained from our minds.  I take that back – this is not slow regression.  It is taking place within a few generations.  Now I’m going to sound like an old, crotchety person, but the influx of technology is sapping our imaginative capacity.  No one is bored anymore.  They are glued to their iPhones, iPads, video games, Kindles and other entertainment devices.  Hanging around my nieces and nephew (and my two year old niece knows how to operate an iPad flawlessly), I can see them immersed in their own worlds of their choosing (their apps and games).  You may be saying that a similar argument was made when books were invented, the great leap forward we made with the printing press and literacy.  But that promoted imagination, not squelched it.  Reading is an active process, and you have to create the pictures and interpretations of the content internally.  What about radio?  That’s only voice.  Your brain still had to fill in the blanks.  The backwards slide, I hate to say it, is film.  Sure, you can watch a film actively, but most people don’t.  For the majority, it is dispensable entertainment that leaves you soon after you view it.  Television is the same as well.  There are no blanks or gaps, but there is interpretation.  If anything, playing a video game is more active (or reactive).  But this constant interaction with something that is designed to cater to your every whim is dangerous.  It gives the user the impression that they should never have to be without entertainment with something they find interesting.  It shortens attention spans and robs us of periods of time where our minds can wander.  What happens when you were a kid (or heck, even as an adult) where you’re on a road trip somewhere and you are staring out the window at the world and your mind drifts to daydreaming?  You are creating that world.  How can you create that world if you are watching a DVD or playing a Nintendo DS?  The more we allow others to provide us content so that in turn we provide none for ourselves by ourselves and our own agencies, the more we lose the capacity to imagine.  Those synapses won’t fire as frequently, while other synapses, the ones keyed into what’s in front of our faces, will strengthen.  What will this look like in 80 years?

I know this is sounding rather maudlin, and I’m sorry.  I’m pretty sick about it myself.  I sat at tables in restaurants and watched my niece and nephew buried in their phones.  When their father took the phones away and “forced” the children to interact, it seemed more like they were counting down the minutes before they could get back to what they wanted.  When my sister appeared upset with me that I went back to my mom’s house after dropping off the kids after a trip to Toys ‘R Us to buy them Christmas gifts, and my nephew promptly descended into the downstairs game room to play his new copy of Lego Marvel Super Heroes, that I wasn’t going to hang out and spend “quality time” with the kids, I couldn’t muster the requisite guilty feeling that I knew I was supposed to have.

Hideaki Anno, Please Leave Eva Alone

I’ve actually been crafting this rant for years, but it wasn’t until this summer that the buzzing wouldn’t cease, so I need to address it:

Hideaki Anno is either the biggest whore or horribly tortured by being out of ideas.  I cannot really see a third option.

Directors often have to make compromises when creating their works.  Screenplays go through rewrites, adjustments during production and post-production are made, editing creates issues.  Sometimes films are screened for producers and/or test audiences, and further modifications are made.  While it is their “vision,” that vision is sometimes negotiated.  Which is why we have directors’ cuts of films.  Directors can restore, re-edit, and reimagine their works to more closely reflect their intentions.

Let’s take, for example, Blade Runner (1982).  There are FIVE official versions of the film (I am not counting the San Diego Preview version or the broadcast version[which was done largely by the channel]): the 1982 work print version (which was used to show executives and test audiences, which prompted a lot of revisions), the theatrical version (which had the voice over and the “happy” ending), the international version (which has more violent action scenes), the1992 director’s cut (which is mostly the work print with some modifications and restoration), and the 2007 final cut (what Ridley Scott considers to be the definitive version).  Most of the differences in these versions deal with content related to violence, changes in score, different endings, Ford’s voice-over and technical aspects.  While any adjustment is important to the overall work, the major revisions for this, arguably, are the changes in ending and the removal of the voice-over.  Most everything else conceptual, thematic, character- and plot-related is retained.

A majority of film wonks will say that either the 1992 or 2007 version is the best.  I’ve never heard anyone take up the side of the theatrical version.  Criterion backed the international version, which was the version they released on laserdisc in 1987. The work print version is important, as it is the basis for the 1992 version and is 70mm.

Another notable work that went through different iterations is Brazil (1985), which had a studio (Universal) put in a “happy” ending.  Terry Gilliam later had the original version released.  Changing the ending of a film is a definite deviation from a director’s intent, so these attempts by the directors to restore their vision is essential.  I would never argue against that.  However, as I will endeavor to demonstrate, sometimes this attempt at revision goes way beyond what is neither wanted nor needed.

Neon Genesis Evangelion is an anime that came out on Japanese television from October 1995 to March 1996.  It is 26 episodes long.  Each episode is approximately 30 minutes.  Some (what looks to be two episodes) of the show aired on The Cartoon Network during “Giant Robot Week” in February 2003 and also was aired on Adult Swim from 2005 to 2007.

The company that produced the show is Gainax.  Gainax was originally founded in 1984 by, essentially, anime nerds.  One of the founding members was HideakiAnno.  He had worked on other projects with other companies, but he and his college buddies got together to produce an opening animation for a large anime convention (Daicon III), and that’s what got the ball rolling.  After his work on Royal Space Force:  Wings of Honneamise (1987), he directed Gunbuster (1988, a film) and Nadia:  The Secret of Blue Water (1990-1991, a 39-episode TV series), as well as continuing to animate Macross projects.  When a sequel project for Royal Space Force was cancelled, he was given a project to create something that had the theme of not running away.  To try to piece together all of the internal and external influences on Anno while he created Evangelion is difficult.  He wanted to bring in a new audience to anime, he wanted to exorcise his demons, he wanted to create a show about humans versus gods, there was a push to create a show that would allow for marketing a lot of toys (which giant robot shows are wont to do), he was in the middle of a four-year deep depression and was exploring psychology and psychoanalysis, he wanted to make a children’s show with adult themes to try to teach children about “harsh reality” (the fact that the show was originally aired during children’s programming slots is particularly eerie).  It is a combination of all of this.

In anime, I consider three shows the Holy Trinity, must-sees:  Trigun (1998), Cowboy Bebop (1998) and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995).  Out of the three, NGE is the best.  Something that is true of the shows, as well as Trigun, is that it starts off more light-hearted but gets deadly serious as we get to towards the end.  They both take place in a post-apocalyptic landscape.  Yet NGE does show that there is a sort of normalcy, even though complete annihilation is waiting every second of the show to rear its head and destroy humanity (school continues to be taught, convenience stores are open).  Comparing that world to Bebop, which is set in the future in space, or Trigun, which is on another planet that has multiple suns and moons, makes NGE seem almost slice-of-life in the outset.  All three are brilliant.   But this post is not about that.

The end of the run of episodes for NGE takes a decided shift from the exterior war against the Angels to exploring the internal world of the show’s protagonist, Shinji Ikari.  There are varied real-world reasons for this.  One was that the budget for the show had been expended mostly on large robot battles (more difficult / expensive to animate), leaving the few ending episodes with almost no funds.  Two was that production scheduling was way behind.  Hidenori Matsubara, who was a key animator on the show, talked a lot about how chaotic making the show was at Anime USA 2002.  Everything was rushed, no one seemed to be in charge, episode directors were passing things on without checking them very carefully.  It was all about just getting the episodes together in time for airing the episode on television.

The above description may make the ending of the show sound like a total train wreck.  Fans are very split on how they feel about the end of the TV series.  Some find it to be completely unintelligible.  It is static shots, lots of voice-over, montage.  It is meant to represent what is happening inside Shinji’s mind.  The external world is ending around him, and Shinji is grappling with his identity and choosing whether to live or become part of the Human Instrumentality Project (this is pretty complicated, but it is essentially where all humans become one – a sort of evolution of the species).  It’s akin to Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” dilemma.  Human existence can be very painful (especially to Shinji, as his mother is dead, his father is a nightmare, and he’s going through adolescence – oh, and the world is ending and he’s supposed to be one of four people working to save it … no pressure).  Some fans see the ending from the perspective of what was happening at Gainax and think the ending is an unsatisfying rush-job.  I fall into the camp of fans that see the end as brilliant.  It takes a truly modernist show about human identity and attempting to connect to others in a rapidly changing world and crushes it into post-modern futility (no one will ever know anyone, perhaps even oneself, in the age of the possibility of the world ending due to man’s “triumph” over nature).  I find the ending deeply meaningful.  “Not in a bang but a whisper.”  That this originated from Japan makes it all the more postmodern.

But there was a lot of outcry from fans saying they hated the ending.  Some even sent Anno death threats.  But the popularity of the show exploded, making Gainax flush with money.  So flushed that they committed tax fraud, resulting in two of Gainax’s members being put in jail in 1999.  The amount of marketing tied to the show is ridiculous (from models to video games to ice trays to chopsticks to toilet paper to luggage to soccer balls to branded coffee to vibrators – there is no shame for Gainax).  But, it doesn’t end there for Eva.

How I saw the series originally was by watching VHS videotapes.  I had a friend who worked in the same mall as the movie theater I was working in, and since we had a few otaku running around (most notably Alex [Cujo], who let me borrow his Dragonball Z), we would trade tapes.  The VHS tapes were released in the US by a company called ADV Films, between August 1996 through July 1998.  I was watching in 2000.  For fans of anime today, please note how long it took for a 26-episode series to be distributed.  And, there were two episodes on each tape.  Go kiss your full series thinpaks now, or write Crunchyroll fan mail.

Laserdiscs came out very slowly and incompletely (eps 1-4 in May 1997 and 5-8 in May 1998).  Why a year in between?  Why not the whole series?  I don’t know.  These were also done by ADV.  Laserdisc as a medium really never quite took off in the US and was pretty much defunct by 1990, so that could be a reason.  The majority of video machines in the US went from VHS to DVD, most completely skipping LD.

DVDs of the show started coming out in 2000.  For those, like me, who started to collect the series, I bought (which was commonplace at the time) the first volume with the art box (see above).  The last volume (8) came out mid-2001, so a quicker release succession for the DVDs than the VHS tapes.  There really isn’t much difference from the VHS tapes to the DVDs.  However, here’s where things start to go awry.  After the entire series came out, in 2004, there were two new releases:  Resurrection and Genesis Reborn.  Resurrection was supposedly the director’s cut of episodes 21-23, and Genesis Reborn was the director’s cut of episodes 24-26.  Each, like the original volumes, was $30.  To quote Paul Fargo’s review for Anime News Network, “Adding about five to ten minutes to each episode'srunning time, the new footage doesn't provide any staggering revelations on itsown, but instead serves to emphasize and clarify points that weren't exploredto their fullest in the original television run of the series. Characterdevelopment is expanded, some of the more vital scenes are extended, and theshow is given a generally improved and streamlined feel. Alongside the newscenes, there are also several minutes of redone animation for existing scenes,which serves to cover up moments of previously off-model and poor quality work.Again, it's nothing Evangelion couldn't live without, but it certainly createsan improved viewing experience.”  I, like a dutiful fan, bought both, but then sold them once I found out that they would be on the thinpak Perfect Collection.  I have since reacquired both.  Genesis Reborn is more egregious.  They only have the DC of episode 24.  There is no new information for 25-26.

So, the director’s cuts just adds some information.  They do not change the ending but more embellish what was already there with content that previously was part of the original Japanese TV broadcast.  In a sense, more complete.

So far, the only thing skewed is the timeline for US release.  The Japanese audience would have seen the original content anyway.  What then happened is the Japanese versions of episodes 25 and 26 were re-directed.  The redirection of those episodes is what becomes The End of Evangelion (1997, released in the US by Manga Video in 2002).  Also released at the same time is Death and Rebirth (again, 1997, released in the US by Manga Video in 2002).  To quote from EvaGeeks.org, “Evangelion: Death is a 70 minute long recap of the first 24 episodes of the Neon Genesis Evangelion TV Series, directed by Masayuki, in the format of a string quartet, each focusing on one of four characters: Shinji, Asuka, Rei, and Kaworu.”  There’s no new material here – it is just previous content re-edited and reordered.  Rebirth is “the first 25 minutes of The End of Evangelion. Originally planned to be the whole film but was incomplete.”  So, if you bought both together, since they were released within two months of each other in 2002, then you were buying something you pretty much already had if you bought the series and End of Evangelion.  Death and Rebirth is essentially a $30 rip off.

The End of Evangelion is something new for US audiences that did not see the Japanese reworks of episodes 25 and 26.  It is a completely different ending.  For those fans that had been clamoring for a knock-down, drag-out fight between the Angels and the Evas, this was what they wanted to see.  The internal workings of Shinji are discarded for all-out violence.  It appears as if Shinji and Asuka are the only two humans left, as the Human Instrumentality Project is realized by Rei melding with Adam and Lilith.  While this looks incredibly bleak, the ending of the series, with Shinji surrounded by everyone, clapping and saying “Congratulations,” is far more positive and uplifting.

The people who like the ending of the series tend not to like The End of Evangelion and vice versa, though it is possible to see them both complimenting each other (Shinji could still go through the internal conflict we see in the series in End, we just don’t see it), and the dream-like quality of the end of the series may just be a continuation of Shinji’s wish for the future, with the reality being on the beach with Asuka.  So, it is possible to like either or like both.  Anyone who likes neither … um, why are you bothering to watch anyway?  That’s a long road to travel if you don’t like the premise, characters and so on.

But now, there is yet another version of the same show.  It is called the Rebuild of Evangelion.  It is supposed to have four parts.  As of now, three have been completed and released:

·         Evangelion:  You Are (Not) Alone (2007)

·         Evangelion:  You Can (Not) Advance (2009)
·         Evangelion:  You Can (Not) Redo (2012)

The fourth is Evangelion:  Final and does not have a production or release date.  It is an “alternate retelling” of the original series.  The last film is supposed to be an “alternate ending,” supposedly to the storyline of the rebuild and not of the original series.

Even though I’m a fan, when I initially heard about this project, I was pessimistic.  There’s really no loose ends that need to be tied up.  There’s already two ending to the same story.  What is to be gained by revisiting?  Do we need an alternate version?  But seeing almost everyone from the original project returned seemed to indicate that there was enough interest from the creative team to take up the reins.  Maybe it would be good?

And when I saw the first one, I was won over, if only slightly.  The production value was very good.  Battle sequences were exciting and really popped.  What I couldn’t understand was what Mari was doing in the movie.  What did she add besides fan service, if even that?  A new series of models and figures to sell?  This is where I start to gravitate towards Anno being a whore.  There is also more of Kaworu in the rebuild.  Why?  Again, I don’t know.  Where he comes in during the original series makes sense.  Why he’s in from the beginning in the rebuild is puzzling.  Again, fan service?  So I can hear everyone squee when he’s on screen?  That’s irritating.  Overall, the first and second parts of the rebuild just looked glossier, shinier, and sounded louder.  Is that what a decade of all these creative people are bringing to the table?

It wasn’t until I saw the third part at Otakon 2013 that I started to feel pretty disenchanted.  Almost nothing that was happeneing at the end of 2.0 is in 3.0, and we’ve taken a jump 14 years into the future for some reason that completely escapes me.  NERV has split in two with Gendo, Fuyutsuki, Rei and Kaworu with the original NERV and Misato, Ritsuko, Asuka and Mari in something called Wille, and NERV and Wille are fighting each other.  Aside from fighting over I don’t know what anymore and a lot of procedural start and service sequences for the EVAs, there’s really nothing here to anchor to.  The humanity of the original series is completely drained.

Why?

What is the fucking point?  Why was this so necessary to be made?  There was a proposed sequel to Casablanca where Captain Renault and Rick go fight on the side of the resistance in Algeria or Libya, but they didn’t do it.  Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do something.  I can see why we had End of Evangelion.  But why take these characters and exploit them like this?  If you wanted to tell a different story, then do it.  But don’t rape these characters and punish them just because a large number of people liked them.  Anno did some live action films (Cutie Honey [2004], Ritual [2000] and Love and Pop [1998]) and is the voice actor for the main character in Hayao Miyazaki’s final film The Wind Rises (2013).  It isn't like he has nothing else to do.  Gainax has Gurren Lagan and other shows.  Can't we just leave this one alone?