Monday, May 31, 2004

Alas, Poor Lucas

I saw Star Wars when I was six years old, and the next day I was a new man. It was on TV, broadcast on CBS, and we taped it to watch again, and we wound up watching it so many times I began to memorize the soon-dated commercials for Burger King and a TV-movie called Nairobi Affair. That's how much impact the experience had on me. I learned every crevice of the story on that tape, every cheap special effect and rubbery costume. I was deep in the throes of the love only the young know.

And George Lucas, you little pissant, you went and broke my heart.

The films were re-released in my later teen years with added special effects, digital creatures and places that howled anachronistically from their 1970s surroundings: imagine T-1000 ambling through the background of Gone With the Wind. The original stories weren't enhanced by the extra buildings or the ringed shockwave, so vogue in the 1990s, that emanated from the Death Star after Luke rightfully saved the day and flew home to flirt with his sister (we'll deal with Lucas's incestuous leanings another day). Instead, the stories I'd grown up loving were now shoved to the background, forced to play second fiddle to cheap light shows that felt designed by someone who'd just gotten his computer and was absolutely fascinated with the way he could make little animals walk around a landscape he'd only dreamed of until now.

That's Lucas's defense: the reissued versions of the films, the only ones that will be made available on DVD this fall, are the way he originally envisioned the story, and he only now has the technology to do what he's always wanted. This is all the evidence needed to prove Lucas has always been a cold, sterile filmmaker, interested more in pleasing himself than in serving the audience looking for a good yarn.

When I was little my parents had me fill in a Dr. Seussish book about myself: age, height, photo, where I lived, what I liked to do, my friends: another keepsake in the experiment of being the firstborn. A year or so later I erased some of my previous "answers" and updated them, figuring in my way that this would please my parents. Only it backfired. I was stopped before I could completely undo the past, and I don't remember the book after that. They didn't want an update; they wanted to be able and look back at what I had been like in the past. Different, yes, but that isn't bad. That's just the way things are.

So I'm done with you, George. I've got my VHS copies of the original films, and I'll stick with them until they wear out, and when they wear out I'll buy another set. I loved what you had made. Well, not so much Return of the Jedi, but the point is: you were doing so well. And now you've gone and tried to fix a past that was never broken, and all you've got to show for it is a disappointed audience that arrived too late to stop you.

Sunday, May 23, 2004

How VH1 Became MTV, and Vice Versa

I was fine with the old VH1, I really was. I practically grew up on it, with MTV being programmed out of the cable boxes of my childhood by parents who meant well and reasoned that surely their children could find other means of social interaction with their peer group than discussing pop culture. Hymns, for instance.

So my younger sister and I were weaned on Behind the Music and the Top 20 video countdown, and we grew so familiar with the network's format that we were originally mildly disappointed with MTV. Where was the actual music that supposedly represented one-third of its acronym? Waves of "original programming" were heaved at us, with music videos only occasionally surfacing for our viewing pleasure; forget even trying to learn about any new music that wasn't Top 40 or TRL material. TRL; that podium from which Carson Daly spouted inane ingratiations for endless parades of talentless pop singers and resigned-looking movie stars, the kind who know they should know better than to be anywhere near Daly and his foul stench of desperation.

But, of late, VH1 has seen fit to reinvent itself, blasting out of the gate with new graphics, ads and ubiquitous I Love the '80s episodes running 24/7. The network shot a sequel to the '80s show, as well as one for the '70s, both of which were soon followed by The Fabulous Life of..., a show clearly designed to foster the worship/envy mentality that, taken to its deadly and inevitable extreme, creates things like the E! network.

The network now produces nothing but smug, commercial-anti-commercial clip shows mocking the media they so lovingly embraced just a few years ago, hosted by B-level stand-up comics and actors dragged out of retirement to explain/apologize for Welcome Back, Kotter.

And MTV? While still creating original programming, the network has maintained and even increased the amount of time devoted to music videos and developing artists. VH1 can't seem to get enough tabloid photos of J-Lo, but MTV is encouraging viewers to check out new records by Modest Mouse, Von Bondies and others.

VH1, you can keep your paparazzi programming, gossip shows and movies like Space Jam.

I want my MTV.

Saturday, May 22, 2004

Review: "Troy"

Starring Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Brian Cox, Peter O’Toole
Directed by Wolfgang Petersen

2.5 stars (out of 4)

Summer is again upon us, and to remind us we've another costumed epic parading as insightful social drama. No, not Gladiator. This time out it's the oldest story ever told: a reinvention of Homer's The Iliad starring every young leading man in Hollywood.

The story: Paris (Bloom) and brother Hector (Bana), princes of Troy, visit Sparta to ally with its king, Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson). Paris seduces Menelaus's wife, Helen (Diane Kruger), and takes her home with him to meet his father, Priam (O'Toole). Menelaus seeks help in rescuing Helen and assaulting Troy from his brother, Agamemnon (Cox), who has been spreading his lands and increasing the strength of the emerging Greek state with the aide of his prized warrior, Achilles (Pitt). Achilles is open with his disdain for Agamemnon, but agrees to lead the charge.

Going to see Troy for the acting would be like going to see, well, The Lord of the Rings for the same reason: the computer wizardry and hokey voice-overs quell early on any hopes you may have of actually being taken somewhere new by the film.

Bloom, apparently deciding to make a career of bloated, over-produced epics, equally frustrates and annoys as the whimpering Paris, whose puppy love for another man's wife was all the excuse for war Agamemnon needed. Bana brings a believable nobility to Hector, the only character here to enjoy besides O'Toole's mournful and dignified Priam. As Achilles, Pitt oscillates between reluctantly growling the laughable, two-dimensional "inspirational" lines he's been saddled with, like "Immortality. Take it! It's yours!" Screenwriter David Benioff (25th Hour) is woefully committed to making us realize over and over again that yes, our acts do live on after us. Too bad Russell Crowe has already been there.

It's a popcorn flick, to be sure, a sandals-and-skirts brawl I wish had been around when I was in high school: it sure beats trudging through hundreds of pages of fairly boring verse. For injecting fresh thrills, however few, into an old story, Petersen should be thanked. But with a running time of almost three hours, he should've remembered: less is always more, and more is painfully less.

Review: "Kill Bill Vol. 2"

Starring Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Michael Madsen, Daryl Hannah; written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

(Rated R for violence, language and brief drug use)

3 stars (out of 4)

"Tarantino's derivative," Mike said to Rob in Swingers (1996) as they sat around playing cards. Shortly thereafter, they and their friends walked down an alley in choppy slow motion, a nod of grudging respect to Reservoir Dogs (1992), the film that put Quentin Tarantino on the festival and cultural map. The point? Imitation is the sincerest way to disguise plagiarism, or something like that.

The first volume of Quentin Tarantino's fourth film, Kill Bill, ended with an orgy of bloodletting by the Bride (Uma Thurman), followed by Bill's teaser: "Does she know her daughter is still alive?" Most of this has been forgotten in the interim, though, something Tarantino is probably counting on: although the second half of a larger story, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 does its best to stand out as a film in its own right. That it succeeds as much as it does is to Tarantino's credit-when making one film into more without compromising the story, it's easy to miss the mark, as Peter Jackson and the Wachowski brothers could no doubt woefully attest.

Less violent than its predecessor, though that isn't saying much, Kill Bill: Vol. 2 shows us the story of the Bride before the events of the first film mingled with her march toward the inevitable: to kill Bill (duh).

When last we left our bloodthirsty heroine, she had dispatched two of the four members of ex-boss (and old lover) Bill's Deadly Viper Assassination Squad. Remaining are Bill's brother Budd (Michael Madsen) and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah), but if you think the heroine of a martial arts flick is going to be stopped before meeting her main enemy, you're beyond my help.

True to form, Tarantino doesn't tell the story chronologically: after confronting Budd and suffering initial defeat, we flash back to the Bride's training under Kung Fu master Pai Mei (Gordon Liu). Using a grainier film stock and plenty of zoom shots, the training sequences are Tarantino's ultimate ode to the martial arts films he grew up on and which have so strongly influenced his style. The corniness holds all the way down to Pai Mei's subtitled dialogue, including his taunt to the Bride: "Let's see your Tiger Crane match my Eagle's Claw!" I didn't know whether to laugh at the false weight of the moment or fall prostrate before the master; it's obvious what Tarantino did.

The Bride, whose name was bleeped out (for suspense?) in the first film, has her identity revealed here, and I won't spoil it except to say that the discovered wordplay isn't worth the wait. I would've preferred the constant anonymity of a nameless heroine to the almost arbitrary decision to let the secret out.

I will say that Tarantino's getting soft in his old age, though. The man who saw fit to annihilate Vincent Vega now plays the family card by exalting the Bride as mother of 4-year-old daughter B.B., who the Bride assumed had died during her coma.

Vol. 1 was devoid of any strong men, and the few here are emasculated right out of the story by our heroine on her way to her goal: not revenge, but motherhood. Tarantino has made the ultimate woman's picture, or at least ultimate for him, with mommy dearest wielding cold steel against any archetypal male villain (and there are plenty of these) who would stand against her.

Perhaps splitting the film into two volumes benefits the larger story: while a sudden gearshift halfway through a 3-hour epic might seem confusing, the division between the first, mindlessly bloody half and the slower, often more experimental second one saves the day.

Cutting any other film into two parts might have hurt it; after all, you can shear a sheep many times but slice him up with a Hattori Tanzo sword only once. While the first film has the advantage of surprise, people know what to expect in the second and are not as easily fooled (again, talk to the Wachowskis). But Tarantino sidesteps that problem by being himself and telling a pointless story with enough style to counteract its inherent inexistence.

The myriad of typefaces used in the multiple versions of the credits, the intentional placement of the Bride in a stationary car with the background projected on a screen and the downright silliness of the dialogue are indicative of a man who loves movies above all. Don't forget that Tarantino opened the whole show with: "Revenge is a dish best served cold," cited as an "old Klingon proverb." The entire film, like his others, is an exercise in taking small pieces of other works and reassembling them as his own.

But, as Rob later pointed out to Mike, "Everybody steals from everybody. I mean, that's show business." Something Tarantino took to heart.