Theater Going Experience

            I re-watched "Django Unchained" last night at my college's movie theater, it was the last movie they would be showing for the semester, it is the last weekend before undergrad finals begin, the movie is a huge success, the showing is free to students, all of these factors contributed to the place being packed.  And I would like to say that I have a sort of complaint: people laugh at weird times.

            I read an article by a black movie critic about the "Django Moment" when a black audience member will hear a white audience member laugh at some point, and get mad about there being nothing funny on screen.  I have a similar complaint, but it isn't a black/white thing, it is a smart/dumb thing.  Stupid people laugh at things that they are made nervous by.  Stupid people laugh at things that make them uncomfortable.  Stupid people need to stop going to theaters cause this shit is annoying.

            At one point the protagonist shoots a man with what amounts to a 1850's sniper rifle.  The man getting shot is helping his son plow a field.  The kid watches his father fall to the ground and die.  It is a sad scene that is referenced later as an important moment in Django's growth as a gunfighter in a hard world.  People laughed.

            At one point three slave traders are transporting a cage filled with three men and have to move dynamite from a pack horse to the cage, they throw the dynamite in and the slaves are scared.  It is an illustration of cruelty.  People laughed.

            A character is about to be castrated.  It is a dreadfully scary scene.  People laughed.

            There are funny things in the movie.  It is hysterical at various points, there are little things that happen even in the most explosively violent parts that elicit a chuckle.  But none of these things are in that camp, these things are supposed to be watched and felt on a different wavelength.  If you are laughing at these parts, then you are watching the movie wrong.

            What is more this is the sort of crap that falls into the "theater experience" people claim is part of movie viewing.  Presumably the other parts are sticky floors, burnt popcorn  ambient body odor, people checking their cell phones (something will provoke me to murder one day) and the film reel randomly failing in the middle of a presentation.  Theaters are kind of shit when you get down to it and I am wondering more and more why we hold them up so much.  Why did I re-watch a movie specifically to take advantage of it still being in a theater?  Seriously, why?  I could have rented the thing for 50 cents and had a lot more control over my viewing.  Could have bought it and been able to see a lot more of the features.

Seriously, can't they just shut the fuck up?

            This will probably not answer the question but I keep thinking of it.  I recall a science fiction show called "Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex".  "Ghost" primarily deals with cyber terrorism in the near future through the eyes of a group of talented counter terrorism and computer specialists.  In one episode a series of mysterious deaths prompts them to investigate, they discover that the deaths all had to do with people just plugging into a particular server, and then never leaving, eventually their bodies just starved.  So the lead investigator goes into the server to see what is the issue.  Turns out the server is the brain of a great movie director, the director was so sick of compromising his vision of his perfect film he decided to just turn his brain into a virtual reality theater to show the movie on a loop.  The people who died were so enraptured by the film they just watched it over and over until they died (kind of like those morons who killed themselves after watching "Avatar").  What is funny is that the inside of the server actually does take the form of a theater.  It's not that people are watching the movie in a private room, people are together in a massive room and can hear the murmur of each other's reactions, they can hear each other cry and laugh and experience art.

            So in a show entirely about the future  and technologies impact on the human experience, people still will get together to watch movies collectively in a dark room.  Not to discuss them afterward (because they never stop watching it) but because they feel that being a part of an audience is inherently part of watching a movie.

This show tends to be a good mix of the Cerebral and the Action.

Movies 2012, Top 5

            After the power went out last night I decided to just postpone writing my Top 5, but here there are, just like I planned I did my reviews for the movies of 2012 before the end of January just like I hoped.  Now to stop reviewing things for a while cause my brain is tired.

5. Award for Best Soft Science Fiction: "Looper" (Trailer)

            Time travel movies are a pain in the ass from a scripting/plotting position.  By their very nature they are trying to express a metaphor for life without coming out and saying it, but people get so bogged down in the details of the mechanics (and really that is part of the fun) that they miss the point.

            Take "Back to the Future" (Trailer), a big thrust of that Franchise is how the more things change, the more they stay the same.  There are restaurants catering to nostalgia; there are campaign vans doing announcements; in each movie there are similar instances of the main character, Marty confronting bullies, in the 1950's he soundly defeats them, in 2015 he barely gets away unscathed, in 1885 he is nearly murdered.  The point is to illustrate how certain world views would come into conflict in different eras, but there is a sense of repetition and contrast.

            "Looper" has a very different message, one that has to do with the cyclical nature of one's decisions and how they affect others.  If you could go into the past to kill your hated enemy as a child, would you try to change the path your younger self is on, and how would seeing what you eventually become change your view on the world.  There is a lot that can be said about trying to kill your own future self, not just through bad decision making but by actually trying to shoot him/you.

9/10

Okay, I know where this is going!  Let's just get it over with!

4. Award for Best Horror Movie, and Arguably Best Comedy: "Cabin in the Woods" (Trailer)

            I am the first to argue that Horror as a genre needs some fresh perspectives on itself.  They (as well as much of Hollywood) have begun the horrific act of self cannibalism as they reuse old franchises, old tropes, and haven't gotten anything "new" in recent time outside of going more and more extreme with violence.

            And I understand why, it is hard to come up with a new idea, design it, produce it, and then sell it.  Even making something classic well is difficult because trying to put a new spin on something like vampires or werewolves isn't possible because they have been run so far into the ground.

            "Cabin in the Woods" is the ultimate destination for horror, and I would go so far as to say that it kind of broke the whole genre down to its core.  It vivisects the idea of people being in the middle of nowhere under assault by monsters.  "Cabin" addresses the soulless machine that produces the movies, it addresses the audiences, it addresses the element of escalation.  This movie is great.

            Let me leave with this, at one point the heroes are cornered, and they concoct a plan.  Logically what happens would require slightly more effort but I don't think anybody should care.  This movie gets to a point in which you do not think it can go any more insane, and then they hit (what I will call) THE AWESOME BUTTON and the whole thing just takes off into new levels of HOLY-SHIT.

9/10

3. Award for Most Awesome Dystopia: "Dredd" (Trailer)

            I like dystopias, they are some of my favorite social commentaries as they mostly just reductio ad absurdum a current trend in the modern world.  "Blade Runner" (a movie I do not really like) in which you can buy and sell androids that are more human than human, leaving the audience to question what happened to the dumb masses as they are literally buying people.  "1984" was the totalitarian regime of history re-writing fascists, a world in which... well, I guess we can all debate which political ideology won the Cold War in that universe, in my opinion it could have been anyone.  Or "Mad Max" when the world is slowly creeping toward depletion and nobody has a way of making civilization sustainable again.

            "Dredd" is a simpler commentary than that, it is about the escalating nature of the war on crime, the problems that a future of urban sink will cause, and the possible necessity of much more draconian police work.  Whoo-boy is this movie fun: violence is not toned down, a guy's head is melted in the cold opener, numerous people are burned to death, skinned, shot, exploded, or die choking on their own crushed throat bones, frequently this violence is shown in slow motion, and the slow motion is not gratuitous, but is actually a plot point.  This is the sort of violent dystopia that "The Hunger Games" (Trailer) was supposed to be, and couldn't attain because of its market.

            I pray to Metztli this movie sells enough on DVD to get its sequel because the theater release was not strong enough even in 3D.  When this thing hits 15$ I think I will snap it up because it really needs to be bought and supported, like its brother in arms, "Kick-Ass". (Trailer)

9/10

2. Award for Most Cathartic Violence: "Django Unchained" (Trailer)

            While "Dredd" has violence against criminals that are law breakers and violent monsters in many cases, and the violence feels good when it is exacted on the bad guys, the truth is, "Dredd" is commenting on a future that has not happened yet and uses its style to explore a very strange and dark future that is rather easy to avoid.  "Django Unchained" is a very clever and powerful exploration of an era in history that already happened.

            The violence in "Django" is not against law breakers and crooks, it is against the plutocrats that have grown rich and fat off a monstrous civilization wide failure.  The villains have their own twisted perspectives, they have their own beliefs, they have there own families and histories, they love and hate different things, in short, the bad guys are more human and believable, and as such their monstrous behavior ending in a chaotic over the top explosion of violence on the part of the hero feels good on a deeper level.

            "Django" has smart dialogue, human characters, powerful scenes, and a full and dark exploration of slavery that juxtaposes so well with the almost cartoon like levels of violence to produce a very rich and thought provoking movie that is so worth the time to watch it.

10/10

1. Award for best Realization of my Dreams to Date: "Avengers" (Trailer)

            I like superheroes.  This is no secret, I have written more than 50 blog entries on the topic of comic book super heroes (of which I have only migrated 3 onto this particular blog, but that is really more of a house keeping issue than a strike against my favorite hobby), I have hundreds of comic books, I have read probably more than a thousand (I have never really put together a good estimate) I have created my own characters since I was a kid, and I have had any number of contacts with the genre of superheroes my whole life because I love it.

            "Avengers" rocked my socks.  Yes there are little things in it that don't make sense (except most of the ones people cite do make sense if you think about things from the perspective of the character doing the action) but those are few and don't matter.  Things build and build and then release in the best action scene of the year.  The whole movie is filled with good dialogue and interesting characters interacting.  The thing is just excitement and fun and it makes me feel like a kid watching the characters I treasure so much come to life to fight a villain that I really like and understand and feel somewhat sorry for.  This is the stuff young Josh would have loved to get growing up and the idea that it exists for current Josh to appreciate and that more of the things I love will come to life in time makes me feel good about the cultural future I get to be a part of.  We collectively are looking up to big heroes and big ideas and in the long run that is important, we should think big, we should dream big, and that should be what our biggest and best movies should be.

10/10