First Orson’s post on The King’s Speech! It’s just a link, but a good one: Christopher Hitchens takes the film to task on its rather fuzzy understanding of history, specifically the behaviour of Churchill and the royal family before the war. The word “appeasement” appears – one of those fun words that only ever appears in a certain context – and Hitch reminds us how so many British national myths, from the doughty heroism of Churchill to the magical ability of our royal figureheads to produce some quantity of “national unity”, are mostly fantasies. And good on him.
I went to see the film with a friend who said it reminded him of how much he believes in the monarchy. True enough, watching this film will not turn a royalist into a republican. Of course, the film refuses to flatter the royal family; but it does so by pulling that old con trick, “they’re just normal people in a strange situation”, inviting gasps and giggles as we watch these everyday human beings try to live up to the tradition of obeisance they just happened to inherit.
It’s hardly the first bit of screen fiction to “humanise” British royalty – but let’s unpack our need to “humanise” them. Though it seems like irreverence, it really just reconciles royalty to us as an acceptable novelty, neatly brushing aside all those awkward national and political facts that we would rather not confront.
I’ve chosen eight shots I treasure (the last two I regard as among the finest in all of cinema). They’re not all strictly “deep focus” shots, but they do emphasize three-dimensionality in their compositions. I’ve presented them with only minimal identifications so you can simply watch them and see what happens without distraction or interruption. Instead, I’ve decided to write about them below. Feel free to watch the clips and then re-watch (freeze-frame, rewind, replay) the clips to see what you can see. To say they repay re-viewing is an understatement.
As you may or may not know, Call of Duty: Black Ops (or CODBLOPS) was released last week, to a fanfare of critical praise from mainstream papers like The Telegraph and The Guardian (“the pinnacle of the military shooter experience”) as well as the usual games sites. Many reviewers remarked how CODBLOPS provides an experience akin to a high budget action movie. Be this as it may, it achieves this by rather questionable means, as is demonstrated in the video below, in which T2DMrBungle completes the seemingly action-packed first mission without firing a shot. On the second-to-hardest difficulty setting.
The “game” – in addition to being the worst sort of action movie knockoff – simply does not require any skill on part of the player. However we define “game”, it must surely include the ability to lose, and the ability to provide a challenge. What we have here is a military theme park ride – a smooth-edged, lubed-up cliche, that forgoes the unique aspects of the gaming medium in favour of slavishly imitating the worst aspects of film.
Why am I posting this? To help demonstrate the state of big budget gaming to people who may not know, and to illustrate that – at the commercial level, at least – gaming is probably worse than you thought. To clarify: it’s sub Michael Bay gun porn with shit for a story requiring only the tiniest squirts of mental effort. It’s hick feed. Dullard distracter. You get the point.
To clarify: when I defend games, I’m not defending this.
Do you reject bigotry but also find it fascinating?
Do you appreciate profound aphorisms about marketing?
Then MAD MEN ™ is for You
People back then were so different from us, yet in many ways the same.
Seriously, this must be the most boring thing to ever be on television. Every episode is the same. They smoke and drink at work, someone is sexist, then Don Draper is ineffable and has an affair. Big whoop.
If you’re in the UK, you can stream it up until Monday. The first part covers early Hollywood horror, taking in Frankenstein and Dracula and detailing the careers of their respective leads, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. As well as Bride of Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein and… Cat People. That’s all I’ve seen so far. The second apparently covers Hammer Horror and the third, American slasher films.
You may recognise Mark Gatiss’ name from his writing credits on the new Doctor Who, or the face from the national treasure that is The League of Gentlemen – a show that wore a lot of infuences from classic horror.
Here’s a good bit. When I first saw that skit, I couldn’t believe how good it was. Papa Lazarou is a Lynchian horrific patriarch – with the silliness is set up a notch or two, but the menace intact. These guys understood that the right amount of hamminess and camp can leaven horror without diminishing it.
Please don’t get the impression that we hate Roger Ebert around here. I happen to think he writes the best film reviews going, often coming up with refreshing angles and observations, and maintaining an admirably starchy sense of principle.
In this clip, Rog talks to an imaginary friend just out of shot about Grave of the Fireflies, moving on to a more general apologia for anime. (I used a reverse version of this rhetorical manoeuvre in my review of Eden of the East.)
He is really keen on the technical minutae of the form and how small details in animation can convey character and emotion. The comparisons with techniques used in Japanese poetry and film ring true, despite seeming a bit tenuous.
Gushing about anime will always be untrendy, but this video shows that Roger Ebert is not afraid to geek out, if geeking outshould prove necessary. I lost my temper with him over the “games can never be art” remarks because he seemed to be preying on geeky pastimes to prove an artsy superiority. He has since apologised for the whole thing (albeit not having changed his opinions on the matter) and I will happily grasp that olive branch.
Japanese animation seems to happen on another planet. Apart from lauded breakthrough films like Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away and Satashi Kon’s Millennium Actress, we hear very little of it. The TV side especially maintains a reputation for being trashy, childish and cheap. No bullshit: a lot of TV anime is trashy, childish and cheap, but so is a lot of TV. And on Japanese TV, animation is not a side dish, but a main course. Popular anime shows get prime time slots, long runs of several series, follow-up films and big marketing budgets.
Someone interested in film – or visual entertainment in general – could do worse than keep an eye on this scene. For all the kiddy cash-ins, Japan has exerted a massive influence on animation worldwide. Its animators cultivated uniquely economical ways of describing motion and feeling, born of necessity when the process was painstaking and budgets were low. On this stylistic foundation was built an edifice of sophisticated and mature classics. Ghost in the Shell reinvigorated cyberpunk; Neon Genesis Evangelion used sci-fi tropes to create gut-wrenching Freudian melodrama; Miyazaki won the West over with deft storytelling and unparalleled craft.
Computers gave talented artists and directors a vast array of novel techniques to use and abuse, and offer lowered costs and raised production values across the board. As a result, TV anime through the ’00s increased in quality and quantity, with a constant scramble for new fads and angles, the output often formulaic but occasionally brilliant. Today, anime is slick, popular, confident and keen to try new things. And in Japan, it has a broader demographic appeal than you might expect. Shows for male viewers dominate, roughly split into young adult (shonen) and grown-up (seinen) programming. But there’s a good line in quirky romances for the young female audience (shoujo), and again for their grown up counterparts (josei). In this latter category we find Eden of the East, a smart, unusual thriller. It is definitely a contemporary show: it finished its initial run in June last year, and has a feet-on-the-ground modern day setting. Two movie sequels, one released and one still in development, are showing in Japan only. For this review we’re just looking at the series, which is to be distributed in the US by Funimation.
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