(apologies for the delay between this post and my last one, I was teaching a 2-week condensed course from Jan. 5 to Jan. 14 that left little time for anything else)
For most of the country the "holidays" are already over, but at my college the spring semester doesn't start until this Tuesday, so I guess I can get a little more use out of this title. This time it's a couple likely Oscar contenders that I missed in theaters but have now caught up with on Blu-ray.
The Hurt Locker
At the moment (though these things can change quickly), this appears to be the front-runner for Best Picture, having just picked up the top award from the Broadcast Film Critics; we'll see what happens at the Golden Globes tonight (though the Globes awards are rather meaningless, the winners do often go on to nominations for the Oscars).
Not surprisingly, the movie itself was very good - intense and engaging. It was more episodic than I had expected, but I think that probably was for the best; this is a case of form matching content, and I imagine that for those serving in a war, particularly in a specialty area like bomb disarmament/disposal life itself could seem episodic, with each mission a thing unto itself, and not necessarily a lot of connections between them. Every day you get up, and you go out on a new mission and don't know what's going to happen. The movie did an excellent job of conveying this sense, and putting us in the mindset of the soldiers in which anything and everything may be a threat or a friendly, and they have to make snap judgments about how to respond to each person, scenario, or place. By the end of the movie we're on the edges of our seats virtually all the time, because it seems like danger could be anywhere.
Strong performances by the cast all around, including a few familiar faces in small roles. One of the most impressive bits to me was simply the way that two different men move while wearing the bomb disposal suit - you get a lot of information about their personalities just from their walks. Sound design was very strong, and I liked that a lot of segments ran for extended segments without music, and the music was subtle in others so that you never felt it coming in and out. Also a lot of good dynamics play, building up to loud, oppressive sound in some places and then folding down to just ambient and Foley in others. Great job by Kathryn Bigelow and her crew on all areas of visual and sonic design.
My only major complaint is with the ending, and to some degree I think it's as much a testament to the caliber of the rest of the filmmaking as anything else. Without giving anything away, there's an extended speech/monologue (well, extended in comparison to the rest of the dialogue which is very sparse) near the very end and then a musical cue at the very end, both of which I could have done without. In the case of the speech, I understand what the motivation behind it must have been, but by the time I got to that point the rest of the film had so effectively (and more poetically) conveyed exactly what was said that it felt superfluous and should have put more trust in the audience (especially after the great line preceding it, which starts with "You know they need more..."). As to the music cue, IMHO it was simply over the top and seemed like it would have been appropriate to a straight-up, good guys vs. bad guys Willis/Stallone/Schwarzenegger action movie than to this much more thoughtful dramatic piece. I guess I can understand the conceptual rationale for this selection as it says something about the character being shown, but again I feel like the movie had already more powerfully said the same thing and this felt like a bit of a cheapening.
All in all, powerful stuff, and a strong entry in the "war classic" genre: a film that shows soldiers in war but is really about something much more primal. I have to say that thematically this reminds me a lot of a more subtly done The Thin Red Line (Malick's 1998 version) even though these two films are artistically worlds apart.
(500) Days of Summer
Movie #2 in last night's double feature (I almost picked up District 9, which I also still need to see, but was a bit worn out from The Hurt Locker and thought this romantic comedy might be easier to handle). According to Entertainment Weekly this is a likely Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay. And the script is fun, has some good lines (my favorite pair ran something like: "That's what would have happened in a world where good things happen to me" "Well, that's not the world we live in."), and I enjoyed both the non-chronological back-and-forth structure and some of the little surprises (including the nods to classic films, especially the hint of The 400 Blows at the end), even though the movie hardly breaks new ground in the relationship comedy genre. I don't buy Summer's final decision, but I did like the very end of the movie so was willing to cut it a little slack.
What impressed me the most about the movie, though, was the way it used a hodge-podge of cinematic devices that all seemed to work, without any of them seeming out of place even when they were only used once or twice (which is hard to do, since usually unusual stylistic choices stick out when only appearing once in a movie). Consider that ALL of the following "tricks" made at least one appearance during the course of the movie (minor SPOILERS, so skip if you want to stay totally fresh):
- direct address to camera by primary character
- direct address to camera by secondary characters
- an omniscient narrator
- split-screen pairing "real" and "imagined" versions of events
- animation
- musical song-and-dance number
- fake "old home video" footage
- repeating the same footage with different sound pairings at different points
- black-and-white in some points, color in others
- 2.35:1 widescreen in some points, 4:3 in others
Kudos to director Marc Webb and the whole crew for combining all these different tricks effectively without them ever being distracting to the audience or feeling inappropriate. So it's worth checking out for the creative decisions made, and I definitely liked the movie, but I'm not sure it's as good as some of the reviews/hype have made it out to be. Certainly I don't think it's the #227 movie of all time (current ranking on IMDB). However, given that the pickings in the romantic comedy genre tend to not be as strong overall as those in some other genres, if you're looking for an interesting film that doesn't just paint-by-the-numbers, give it a try and even if you're not "wowed," you shouldn't be disappointed.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
broadcast football, technology, and awards
A note to my regular readers: I've rearranged the blog's organization for hopefully easier use, including a search function and a list of all movies/shows/games discussed, with links to the appropriate postings. Enjoy.
While prepping syllabi for the upcoming semester, I'm watching the first of this weekend's NFL wild-card playoff games (trying to get things done before the Packers-Cardinals game tomorrow afternoon so I can watch that one without trying to multi-task). And I was musing about the "yellow line," which I'm old enough to remember televised football without (yes, I realize the grammar of this sentence is a mess). For those who don't watch much football, this is a visual effect added to the broadcast feed (it is not on the actual playing field) to show the audiences at home how far down the field the offense needs to go to earn a first down (sometimes a blue line is also added to show where the line of scrimmage is).
Football has always seemed to me perhaps the ideal sport for television. I still think baseball may be the best sport to attend - nothing else quite has the same ring as "take me out to the ballgame" - but it's not very exciting to watch on TV, and simply because of the number of games played (162 games per season, per team, not counting the post-season?!) there's not really much on the line in any one game. In football, on the other hand, every game can make a difference to some team, so it's easy to take a rooting interest in almost any one. Additionally, it has plenty of guaranteed stops in the action (unlike, say, soccer) to facilitate insertion of commercials; major plays can happen at any time so you want to watch the whole game (unlike, say, basketball, where games are almost always decided in the last few minutes); and the advantages of TV, such as the ability to show replays and get explanations and commentary from the announcers about specific plays (assuming you have decent announcers - see my earlier comments on ESPN's thankfully-over-for-the-season MNF), really enhance the viewing experience.
So there are a lot of reasons I think football is good for TV, but I was thinking about just how big a difference the yellow line makes. What it does is make football a lot more accessible to everyone, whether or not they know much about football, in the same way that you don't have know all the intricacies of pitching in baseball or the pick-and-roll in basketball to understand the goal in each sport moment-to-moment (hitting the ball and getting the ball in the basket, respectively). Now anyone can simply look at the screen and know that the offense is trying to get the ball past that line, and the defense is trying to prevent them from doing so. It's just that simple. Great invention.
What many people may not realize is the complexity of the technology that goes into this seemingly simple addition to the broadcast. When it first appeared, it took an entire truckload of equipment to add the line just to the main wide view of the field, and the camera providing that feed couldn't pan or zoom. Today, it appears in just about every shot of gameplay used, and is so common it seems a natural part of the broadcast.
But think about what has to happen for that yellow line to appear to be on the field as the camera pans and zooms during a game:
(1) a processor has to know where on the field the first-down marker is
(2) it has to correlate that with the signal the camera's picking up, even as the camera may pan across the field, zoom in, zoom out, etc.
(3) along the first-down line, it has to examine each pixel in the image and determine - in real-time - whether that pixel represents part of the field (which may be green grass, white or some other color of marking, or some type of snow or mud) or a person (including players who may be wearing some of the same colors as the grass or markings on the field).
(4) for those pixels that are part of the field, it has to color them with yellow and track with camera pans and zooms to keep the right pixels yellow...
(5) ...except that once the play begins, players will be moving across the line and the computer has to immediately change those parts of the picture back to the original camera image as long as a player's in that part of the picture, and then immediately back to the yellow line as soon as a player moves off that spot.
Pretty impressive, huh? For anyone who's ever done greenscreen or motion tracking work, you can imagine how tough this is to do in real-time for a live broadcast - and really, the system makes very few mistakes given the tough job it has to do.
Video, film, and broadcast technologies are improving all the time, and in the big scheme of things the little yellow line on football game broadcasts is far from the most important. But it's a very tangible example of how much creative and technical innovation still goes into making movies and TV better, whether through specific visible results (like the yellow line) or through gradual improvements in overall visual or sonic quality. In the spirit of the latter, checkout this link to the just-announced winners of this year's Scientific and Technical Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the people who put on the Oscars). These are the awards that get a brief mention during the Academy Award telecast but are not actually presented at that ceremony. The people winning them may not get the coverage or acclaim as actors, directors, and other craftspeople involved in the film biz, but the movies we see would not be as enjoyable without their labors. Thanks and congrats to all of them.
While prepping syllabi for the upcoming semester, I'm watching the first of this weekend's NFL wild-card playoff games (trying to get things done before the Packers-Cardinals game tomorrow afternoon so I can watch that one without trying to multi-task). And I was musing about the "yellow line," which I'm old enough to remember televised football without (yes, I realize the grammar of this sentence is a mess). For those who don't watch much football, this is a visual effect added to the broadcast feed (it is not on the actual playing field) to show the audiences at home how far down the field the offense needs to go to earn a first down (sometimes a blue line is also added to show where the line of scrimmage is).
Football has always seemed to me perhaps the ideal sport for television. I still think baseball may be the best sport to attend - nothing else quite has the same ring as "take me out to the ballgame" - but it's not very exciting to watch on TV, and simply because of the number of games played (162 games per season, per team, not counting the post-season?!) there's not really much on the line in any one game. In football, on the other hand, every game can make a difference to some team, so it's easy to take a rooting interest in almost any one. Additionally, it has plenty of guaranteed stops in the action (unlike, say, soccer) to facilitate insertion of commercials; major plays can happen at any time so you want to watch the whole game (unlike, say, basketball, where games are almost always decided in the last few minutes); and the advantages of TV, such as the ability to show replays and get explanations and commentary from the announcers about specific plays (assuming you have decent announcers - see my earlier comments on ESPN's thankfully-over-for-the-season MNF), really enhance the viewing experience.
So there are a lot of reasons I think football is good for TV, but I was thinking about just how big a difference the yellow line makes. What it does is make football a lot more accessible to everyone, whether or not they know much about football, in the same way that you don't have know all the intricacies of pitching in baseball or the pick-and-roll in basketball to understand the goal in each sport moment-to-moment (hitting the ball and getting the ball in the basket, respectively). Now anyone can simply look at the screen and know that the offense is trying to get the ball past that line, and the defense is trying to prevent them from doing so. It's just that simple. Great invention.
What many people may not realize is the complexity of the technology that goes into this seemingly simple addition to the broadcast. When it first appeared, it took an entire truckload of equipment to add the line just to the main wide view of the field, and the camera providing that feed couldn't pan or zoom. Today, it appears in just about every shot of gameplay used, and is so common it seems a natural part of the broadcast.
But think about what has to happen for that yellow line to appear to be on the field as the camera pans and zooms during a game:
(1) a processor has to know where on the field the first-down marker is
(2) it has to correlate that with the signal the camera's picking up, even as the camera may pan across the field, zoom in, zoom out, etc.
(3) along the first-down line, it has to examine each pixel in the image and determine - in real-time - whether that pixel represents part of the field (which may be green grass, white or some other color of marking, or some type of snow or mud) or a person (including players who may be wearing some of the same colors as the grass or markings on the field).
(4) for those pixels that are part of the field, it has to color them with yellow and track with camera pans and zooms to keep the right pixels yellow...
(5) ...except that once the play begins, players will be moving across the line and the computer has to immediately change those parts of the picture back to the original camera image as long as a player's in that part of the picture, and then immediately back to the yellow line as soon as a player moves off that spot.
Pretty impressive, huh? For anyone who's ever done greenscreen or motion tracking work, you can imagine how tough this is to do in real-time for a live broadcast - and really, the system makes very few mistakes given the tough job it has to do.
Video, film, and broadcast technologies are improving all the time, and in the big scheme of things the little yellow line on football game broadcasts is far from the most important. But it's a very tangible example of how much creative and technical innovation still goes into making movies and TV better, whether through specific visible results (like the yellow line) or through gradual improvements in overall visual or sonic quality. In the spirit of the latter, checkout this link to the just-announced winners of this year's Scientific and Technical Awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the people who put on the Oscars). These are the awards that get a brief mention during the Academy Award telecast but are not actually presented at that ceremony. The people winning them may not get the coverage or acclaim as actors, directors, and other craftspeople involved in the film biz, but the movies we see would not be as enjoyable without their labors. Thanks and congrats to all of them.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Catching up on media over the holidays (Part 2)
So I'm finally catching up on the new movies, TV, etc. My quick-hit thoughts (well, at least that was what was intended, and as I tend to do I ended up writing more than planned) on three movies seen this week:
The Princess and the Frog
It's great to see a solid 2-D hand-drawn animated feature from Disney after several flops and the studio's attempt at one point to abandon that style and rely solely on 3-D computer animation for its animated films. John Lasseter is a visionary filmmaker in the strongest sense of the word (as evidenced by Toy Story, Cars, etc.) but may be even smarter as an executive, helping people to flourish around him, and was wise to reinvigorate Disney's hand animation unit when Pixar was bought by Disney and he was given creative reign over Disney's entire animation business. This is the studio that brought us everything from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fantasia in their golden age to The Lion King, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid in their 80s/90s renaissance - which is why it's so exciting to see another good, solid entry in their catalog.
The Princess and the Frog (hereafter PATF) is not the best Disney animated film to date, but it's a well-done, engaging story that I expect kids and adults to be enjoying for years to come. From a sociocultural standpoint, this is a milestone in that it gives the hugely popular "Disney princesses" line a long-overdue African-American character in the film's heroine Tiana; the film mostly sidesteps the larger issue of what it means to be a poor black girl growing up in an economically and racially segregated city, and what possibilities this affords (or, more importantly, does not afford), but this is perhaps for the best, and I must admit (minor spoiler alert) that I liked that the film gave Tiana's rich white friend Charlotte a chance to show there was more to her than we had previously suspected at the end - though I couldn't help but wonder why Tiana's rich white friend Big Daddy could not have simply helped her out financially earlier on, since he clearly had more money than he knew what to do with and was aware Tiana could have used it to start her restaurant. But I digress...
The film's plot is predictable - in a good way, so perhaps "comfortable" would be a better word - and it's not really any surprise how things end up in a big-picture sort of way. Its details, though, are charming, from the amusing secondary characters who assist our heroes (what would a Disney be without memorable sidekicks?) to the very specific-feeling bayou, New Orleans streets, plantation house, and other settings. PATF is a feast for the eyes, and has enough genuine laughs and emotion to keep you engaged the whole way through. At ~1:40 it's just the right length, leaving you wanting just a bit more but still feeling successfully concluded.
When compared to the best of Disney's animated films, I have to admit that the songs are not up to snuff - upon leaving the theater, I couldn't remember a single memorable tune or lyric that I would want to hear again. It's not that the songs are "bad," just that they don't have the classic feel of something like "Under the Sea" or "Beauty and the Beast". But this is a minor quibble in a strong film, and I enjoyed the songs in the moment even if I didn't come out humming them.
One note of caution: not sure how this film got a "G" rating, though given how arbitrary the MPAA's ratings are and the fact that they generally assume any Disney animated movie is an automatic G, perhaps it's not surprising. I thought a couple of the scenes with the "Shadowman," particularly when he's summoning the spirits to his assistance (and later when - spoiler alert - he's getting dragged back to the nether realms with them) could be pretty intense for little kids. Adults will appreciate the strong visual style with which these are done, however.
Sherlock Holmes
Full disclosure: I'm a longtime fan of the Sherlock Holmes character, and have read all the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories as well as a number of Holmes stories (both those true to the original style and those that spin Holmes in a new direction) by later authors. I even watch House religiously. So I was understandably worried when I heard Guy Ritchie had been entrusted with such a classic and close-to-my-heart character. The good news? It turns out my fears were only partially justified. True, the action scenes are put together with Ritchie's normal cut-too-fast-and-shot-too-close-to-make-sense-of style (he's like a low-rent Michael Bay, except not as good), and there's not much in the way of classic Holmesian deduction. And I'm not sure that the portrayals of Holmes and Watson here have much in common with the way Doyle envisioned them.
But that doesn't mean the movie's a failure. In fact, I quite enjoyed it as a "popcorn movie"; Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are a lot of fun to watch. It's just that it's not a "Sherlocks Holmes movie." The joy of the Holmes character has always been (at least to me) his ability to take tiny little things and deduce something larger from them. And we do get a bit of that in this film, but not enough to make it what the movie's really about. Instead, we get a bickering old married couple in Holmes/Watson (whose friendship today would certainly fall under the label "bromance"), a lot of fist-fighting and shooting, and a focus on the supernatural that's antithetical (for most of the movie at least) to Holmes' classic rationality.
On its own terms, it works. And I have to give credit where credit is due: this movie does a nice job with Watson. Too many of the older cinematic/TV incarnations of Watson paint him as a doddering fool who's only there to fulfill the plot need of Holmes having someone to whom he can explain his deductions at the end. This never rang true to me: Doyle makes it clear that Holmes and Watson have a real friendship, and I just don't buy that someone as intelligent as Holmes would tolerate spending his time with an idiot. So what I appreciated here is that Watson is made as intelligent and strong a force as Holmes. True, he may not have the same level of attention to detail or deductive reasoning as his more famous companion, but it's clear that he and Holmes feed off each other, and while Watson may get a thrill from accompanying his friend and watching him solve cases, Holmes cannot function without his friend as a sounding board and companion: he needs someone who not only understands his need for intellectual stimulation and hence puts up with his eccentricities, but also can hold his own in a conversation and is not afraid to call Holmes on his more ridiculous behaviors. So kudos on this relationship to the actors, screenwriters, and director.
Ironically, it is a structural element of the film that tries to mimic the structure of Doyle's original stories which is one of its biggest failings. In the classic short stories, Holmes tends to withhold his explanations until the end, when he reveals to Watson and/or his client and/or the police how he solved the case. No problem in a short story, where there is a single key mystery and usually one key observation Holmes made that showed him the answer. The problem with the film is that it raises a LOT of mysteries but (like the short stories) doesn't let Holmes explain anything until the end, when he's forced to give a five-minute monologue laying out all his deductions and explanations in a row, dragging what should have been the climax of the movie to a screeching halt. Far better would have been for him to reveal some of his reasoning throughout, and save the final explanation that ties it all together until the denouement, when it could have carried a lot more punch in a much shorter timeframe.
Go see the movie, you'll have fun, but don't expect something as memorable as the original character. My prediction? This film will make its money, and probably spark a franchise, but will be one of those that is quickly forgotten once it's over. It'll be one of those you watch on late-night cable TV years down the road, but not something you'd actively seek out. Given my feelings about what they've done with the Holmes/Watson relationship, though, I must admit I'll be keeping my eyes out for a sequel, hoping they can build on that strength but have a more truly Holmesian mystery for those two to tackle.
p.s. - keep your ears peeled for some interesting surround usage in the scene where Holmes and Watson investigate the factory on the river.... nicely used here, and I just wish they would have been as thoughtful about the surround the rest of the movie.
Up in the Air
Easily the best movie I've seen this holiday season thus far. The plot is predictable in both its large-scale movements and the in details of its execution, and there were very few "twists" you didn't see coming a mile away, including the ending. But for all that, it's a treat and hard to resist. The actors are superb, and it's a joy just to see them chew on these complex characters. Vera Farmiga is amazing (and gorgeous - why isn't she in more things?) and Anna Kendrick is outstanding in a role very different (but just as well played) as her Alice in the Twilight movies. But it's George Clooney's movie to carry, and he does it. I always forget how good Clooney can be until I see him flexing his muscles in a role like this. Just the range of smiles he uses throughout - truly happy, pretending to be happy, not happy, pretending not to be happy, etc. - and the amount conveyed through them is unbelievable.
The only one more impressive is Jason Reitman: in only his third feature, he's as confident a director as it seems there is working today - and it's a well-earned confidence. Often he's willing to forgo dialogue and let the visuals tell the story, and they do (check out the wedding sequence, which is extraordinary for what it conveys and how it does so, and feels effortless despite the work that has to go into staging any such complex sequence). But he's also not afraid to let the characters talk, and their dialogue (co-written by Reitman and Sheldon Turner from the novel by Walter Kim) sparkles. It's natural and witty, and feels like exactly what these characters would say in these situations.
There's so much one could say about this movie - it's a slice of life, a relationship movie, a workplace comedy, and an insightful social commentary about modern life and work - and yet at the same time it's hard to say a whole lot about it since the joy of this movie is the little things: the way characters share moments, the editing rhythms, the sense of truth to it. So I'll leave it at this: this is a little gem of a movie, without the flash of so many other films this year but with far more emotional and intellectual engagement.
Between this and Precious, there are two movies out right now that are not getting the press and media attention of their bigger-budget brethren but deserve to be seen. Whether naively or optimistically, I'm a believer that movie audiences get what they deserve: if we go out and see terrible movies, the studios will continue to put out more of the same. If, on the other hand, movies like Up in the Air and Precious show that they not only can garner critical raves but also can attract audiences and make money, more character-driven pictures like these will get made. Go out and see them, and you'll be glad you did.
The Princess and the Frog
It's great to see a solid 2-D hand-drawn animated feature from Disney after several flops and the studio's attempt at one point to abandon that style and rely solely on 3-D computer animation for its animated films. John Lasseter is a visionary filmmaker in the strongest sense of the word (as evidenced by Toy Story, Cars, etc.) but may be even smarter as an executive, helping people to flourish around him, and was wise to reinvigorate Disney's hand animation unit when Pixar was bought by Disney and he was given creative reign over Disney's entire animation business. This is the studio that brought us everything from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Fantasia in their golden age to The Lion King, Aladdin, and The Little Mermaid in their 80s/90s renaissance - which is why it's so exciting to see another good, solid entry in their catalog.
The Princess and the Frog (hereafter PATF) is not the best Disney animated film to date, but it's a well-done, engaging story that I expect kids and adults to be enjoying for years to come. From a sociocultural standpoint, this is a milestone in that it gives the hugely popular "Disney princesses" line a long-overdue African-American character in the film's heroine Tiana; the film mostly sidesteps the larger issue of what it means to be a poor black girl growing up in an economically and racially segregated city, and what possibilities this affords (or, more importantly, does not afford), but this is perhaps for the best, and I must admit (minor spoiler alert) that I liked that the film gave Tiana's rich white friend Charlotte a chance to show there was more to her than we had previously suspected at the end - though I couldn't help but wonder why Tiana's rich white friend Big Daddy could not have simply helped her out financially earlier on, since he clearly had more money than he knew what to do with and was aware Tiana could have used it to start her restaurant. But I digress...
The film's plot is predictable - in a good way, so perhaps "comfortable" would be a better word - and it's not really any surprise how things end up in a big-picture sort of way. Its details, though, are charming, from the amusing secondary characters who assist our heroes (what would a Disney be without memorable sidekicks?) to the very specific-feeling bayou, New Orleans streets, plantation house, and other settings. PATF is a feast for the eyes, and has enough genuine laughs and emotion to keep you engaged the whole way through. At ~1:40 it's just the right length, leaving you wanting just a bit more but still feeling successfully concluded.
When compared to the best of Disney's animated films, I have to admit that the songs are not up to snuff - upon leaving the theater, I couldn't remember a single memorable tune or lyric that I would want to hear again. It's not that the songs are "bad," just that they don't have the classic feel of something like "Under the Sea" or "Beauty and the Beast". But this is a minor quibble in a strong film, and I enjoyed the songs in the moment even if I didn't come out humming them.
One note of caution: not sure how this film got a "G" rating, though given how arbitrary the MPAA's ratings are and the fact that they generally assume any Disney animated movie is an automatic G, perhaps it's not surprising. I thought a couple of the scenes with the "Shadowman," particularly when he's summoning the spirits to his assistance (and later when - spoiler alert - he's getting dragged back to the nether realms with them) could be pretty intense for little kids. Adults will appreciate the strong visual style with which these are done, however.
Sherlock Holmes
Full disclosure: I'm a longtime fan of the Sherlock Holmes character, and have read all the original Arthur Conan Doyle stories as well as a number of Holmes stories (both those true to the original style and those that spin Holmes in a new direction) by later authors. I even watch House religiously. So I was understandably worried when I heard Guy Ritchie had been entrusted with such a classic and close-to-my-heart character. The good news? It turns out my fears were only partially justified. True, the action scenes are put together with Ritchie's normal cut-too-fast-and-shot-too-close-to-make-sense-of style (he's like a low-rent Michael Bay, except not as good), and there's not much in the way of classic Holmesian deduction. And I'm not sure that the portrayals of Holmes and Watson here have much in common with the way Doyle envisioned them.
But that doesn't mean the movie's a failure. In fact, I quite enjoyed it as a "popcorn movie"; Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are a lot of fun to watch. It's just that it's not a "Sherlocks Holmes movie." The joy of the Holmes character has always been (at least to me) his ability to take tiny little things and deduce something larger from them. And we do get a bit of that in this film, but not enough to make it what the movie's really about. Instead, we get a bickering old married couple in Holmes/Watson (whose friendship today would certainly fall under the label "bromance"), a lot of fist-fighting and shooting, and a focus on the supernatural that's antithetical (for most of the movie at least) to Holmes' classic rationality.
On its own terms, it works. And I have to give credit where credit is due: this movie does a nice job with Watson. Too many of the older cinematic/TV incarnations of Watson paint him as a doddering fool who's only there to fulfill the plot need of Holmes having someone to whom he can explain his deductions at the end. This never rang true to me: Doyle makes it clear that Holmes and Watson have a real friendship, and I just don't buy that someone as intelligent as Holmes would tolerate spending his time with an idiot. So what I appreciated here is that Watson is made as intelligent and strong a force as Holmes. True, he may not have the same level of attention to detail or deductive reasoning as his more famous companion, but it's clear that he and Holmes feed off each other, and while Watson may get a thrill from accompanying his friend and watching him solve cases, Holmes cannot function without his friend as a sounding board and companion: he needs someone who not only understands his need for intellectual stimulation and hence puts up with his eccentricities, but also can hold his own in a conversation and is not afraid to call Holmes on his more ridiculous behaviors. So kudos on this relationship to the actors, screenwriters, and director.
Ironically, it is a structural element of the film that tries to mimic the structure of Doyle's original stories which is one of its biggest failings. In the classic short stories, Holmes tends to withhold his explanations until the end, when he reveals to Watson and/or his client and/or the police how he solved the case. No problem in a short story, where there is a single key mystery and usually one key observation Holmes made that showed him the answer. The problem with the film is that it raises a LOT of mysteries but (like the short stories) doesn't let Holmes explain anything until the end, when he's forced to give a five-minute monologue laying out all his deductions and explanations in a row, dragging what should have been the climax of the movie to a screeching halt. Far better would have been for him to reveal some of his reasoning throughout, and save the final explanation that ties it all together until the denouement, when it could have carried a lot more punch in a much shorter timeframe.
Go see the movie, you'll have fun, but don't expect something as memorable as the original character. My prediction? This film will make its money, and probably spark a franchise, but will be one of those that is quickly forgotten once it's over. It'll be one of those you watch on late-night cable TV years down the road, but not something you'd actively seek out. Given my feelings about what they've done with the Holmes/Watson relationship, though, I must admit I'll be keeping my eyes out for a sequel, hoping they can build on that strength but have a more truly Holmesian mystery for those two to tackle.
p.s. - keep your ears peeled for some interesting surround usage in the scene where Holmes and Watson investigate the factory on the river.... nicely used here, and I just wish they would have been as thoughtful about the surround the rest of the movie.
Up in the Air
Easily the best movie I've seen this holiday season thus far. The plot is predictable in both its large-scale movements and the in details of its execution, and there were very few "twists" you didn't see coming a mile away, including the ending. But for all that, it's a treat and hard to resist. The actors are superb, and it's a joy just to see them chew on these complex characters. Vera Farmiga is amazing (and gorgeous - why isn't she in more things?) and Anna Kendrick is outstanding in a role very different (but just as well played) as her Alice in the Twilight movies. But it's George Clooney's movie to carry, and he does it. I always forget how good Clooney can be until I see him flexing his muscles in a role like this. Just the range of smiles he uses throughout - truly happy, pretending to be happy, not happy, pretending not to be happy, etc. - and the amount conveyed through them is unbelievable.
The only one more impressive is Jason Reitman: in only his third feature, he's as confident a director as it seems there is working today - and it's a well-earned confidence. Often he's willing to forgo dialogue and let the visuals tell the story, and they do (check out the wedding sequence, which is extraordinary for what it conveys and how it does so, and feels effortless despite the work that has to go into staging any such complex sequence). But he's also not afraid to let the characters talk, and their dialogue (co-written by Reitman and Sheldon Turner from the novel by Walter Kim) sparkles. It's natural and witty, and feels like exactly what these characters would say in these situations.
There's so much one could say about this movie - it's a slice of life, a relationship movie, a workplace comedy, and an insightful social commentary about modern life and work - and yet at the same time it's hard to say a whole lot about it since the joy of this movie is the little things: the way characters share moments, the editing rhythms, the sense of truth to it. So I'll leave it at this: this is a little gem of a movie, without the flash of so many other films this year but with far more emotional and intellectual engagement.
Between this and Precious, there are two movies out right now that are not getting the press and media attention of their bigger-budget brethren but deserve to be seen. Whether naively or optimistically, I'm a believer that movie audiences get what they deserve: if we go out and see terrible movies, the studios will continue to put out more of the same. If, on the other hand, movies like Up in the Air and Precious show that they not only can garner critical raves but also can attract audiences and make money, more character-driven pictures like these will get made. Go out and see them, and you'll be glad you did.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)