Z is for… Wait, is this thing over?

Z is for… wait, is this thing over?

I never did a Z post for the A-Z Blogging challenge. I came limping over that finish line on fumes. Apparently just enough fumes to only see the finish line, not actually cross it. But, honestly, sometimes it feels really good to quit things. So, yay.

There were several things I wanted to bring up today, but upon attempting to write them, I realized I had way too many things to talk about. So, after some self-editing, I thought I’d narrow it down to three.*

·         I'M A MEMBER of the IWM group blog, and contributor to the monthly mag. I continue to be, not only impressed with the contributions of others, but so much so, that I can’t figure out why they haven’t kicked me out yet.

For the very first ANNUAL of the magazine, the editors are asking for your best time-travel stories to be submitted to the mag. From the submissions, real money will be given to those stories selected as winning entries. Actual money they can be spent, I’m told. Not soda money either, but $15 for the winner, and $10 for the runner up. So dust off that old time-travel epic and send it on over <Click here for the details>

Although I'm not eligible for prizes, I'll be submitting.

·         THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 has been out for more than a week. One of the kids in the house (have I mentioned we have a family of 4 living with us now? They’re pretty cool, with our boys being older and never around, it’s nice to have people in the house) watched the last Spider-Man last week with me.

And I suck at reviewing stuff, this is no exception. But like most americans, I don't let my inability to do something interfere with me doing it anyway, and expecting an audience. I feel like that the 2012 flick was a much better movie than the second installment, but am amazed at how, in the second movie, the director so perfectly nailed Spider-Man’s comic book look, character, and gave us the best Comic Book love story I’ve ever seen on film. Marc Webb gets the emotions perfect. The actual action-y plot part though… it’s a bit of a mess, and the more I think of it, the more I feel like all that is frustratingly poorly done. Still, the characters and the small moments make this film worth watching.

·         AND DID ANYONE ELSE see this adorable little film that popped up over the internet recently. Best 5 minutes I’ve seen in a while. Great stuff!

JohnnyExpress from AlfredImageworks on Vimeo.

And that’s pretty much it. The new Rusty has almost no control over his schedule anymore. I’m a tornado of entropy, everything I touch turning immediately into chaos. Anyone who stops by has my sincere thanks.

*ish

The Great Looper Controversy!

I think I mentioned Looper as one of my favorite movies of 2012 on more than one occasion. It was a smart, dramatic, and managed to not back away from having likable, understandable leads do horrible things, and still make us understand them. No easy task in a time-travel movie.

Well, in his recent post, Andrew Leon dared to give my beloved movie a mixed review! Actually, that wasn't my problem with his post. He had a take on some of the events of the movie that I disagreed with. Very subjective stuff. I thought it might be fun to continue to discuss here, where I can do also let my comment to his blog also serve as a post on it's own.

Be warned, spoilers follow... and this may get a bit long, and bogged down with minutia, I won't be mad if you just go about your business and ignore. This really is just me trying to come to grips with Andrew's interpretation of the movie more than anything.

Okay, for those of us who haven't seen the movie, and don't care about spoilers, here is the gist of the controversy:

Loopers are hit men who have one job - kill people that are sent from 30 years in the future, bound and with their heads covered, at a predetermined spot and moment in time.

Now, at some point, part of the deal when you are hired is that, if you are still alive in the future, you will be sent the old version of yourself to kill. Once that deed is done, you get a huge payoff and you are 'retired,' until 30 years later when you are kidnapped, bound and have your head covered, and sent back in time to be killed by your younger self.

During his review, Andrew said this:

"The whole story of Looper hinges on  the belief by the audience that young Joe dies when he falls from the ladder."

In the comments, I (and others) disputed this interpretation of that scene of the film. I responded:

"I don't think the intent was for the audience to believe Joe died when he fell from the ladder. Or if it was, I didn't get it."

To which, Andrew said:

"I'm pretty certain we were supposed to believe he died, because that's the only thing that makes the movie work. He falls and "dies" and everything starts over. Then we get back to the point the second time and the reaction is "oh, he didn't die," and we're meant to incorporate that knowledge into our new movie of the movie and forget the whole dying part so that we can follow the "new" narrative."

I think my gut reaction to that was, "If what he's saying is true, I enjoyed this movie more than I should have because I made up a scenario in my head that is better than what the director actually intended for me to think." My response? Well, you're in luck - I've pasted that below as well:

"If the director killed Young Joe at the ladder it would be beyond stupid (logically), and would lessen the movie immensely... there is no way that is what happened. If you interpreted the fall from the ladder that way I can see why it frustrated you. 
And with that, I'll drop it. I think I've said my piece.
Unless you respond with something that opens up a can or worms."

Now, at this point, Andrew responded and I really misunderstood what he was actually saying - I'll blame the internet for ruining my attention span -  and went a long ways towards preparing today's post before I realized I'd gone way off on a tangent. But regardless of where I was at mentally, Andrew responded with:

But that's not what happened. There is no flashback. The FIRST time he's on the ladder and he falls, the screen goes black, and, then, we're back at the field and he's looking at his watch. old Joe shows up, and he kills him. The clear implication is that Young Joe dies in the fall. You only find out he didn't when we get back to the point from Old Joe's perspective. And, see, what you said makes my point. If Young Joe dies, the movie is over, and it was. Because, when he falls, we go back to field and he kills Old Joe. It was a lie that allows us to buy into the rest of the movie, because, then, we want to know what happened. Why he had the hood on the second time, which we never actually find out.

At this point, the conversation ended, so really, up until this point, I'm only covering ground that was covered yesterday. It's from here forward that new information is being given.

Now, I'm going to break down Andrew's comment into it's component parts, and discuss each one on it's own. That way I can, hopefully not forget anything important.

"But that's not what happened. There is no flashback. The FIRST time he's on the ladder and he falls, the screen goes black, and, then, we're back at the field and he's looking at his watch. old Joe shows up, and he kills him. The clear implication is that Young Joe dies in the fall."

 Ok, this happens a lot in disagreements, two people see exactly the same thing and both come away seeing something different.

That said, I think the actual indicator that Andrew mentioned that points to Young Joe dying is the the screen going black. I'm not convinced that is significant, especially if the lead actor falls from his third story window thirty minutes into the movie. My expectation, as a viewer, is that he will get up, be hurt, and continue on his way. It's from years of conditioning by Die Hard movies, Lethal Weapon movies, Rambo, whatever action movie comes out in any given week. Heck, even that Schwarzenegger movie I saw in January had him fall through the roof of a building while fist-fighting a gun toting madman. The joke was Arnold is old now, so it took him a moment before he could get up and go beat up the rest of the gang. That's a full generation of conditioning I have. So, seeing a man fall from a third story fire escape onto the hood of a car in a movie like this is the equivalent of me missing a step when stepping off my front porch. Yeah, I may twinge my knee a bit, but I'm probably going to be fine.

I'm being snarky there, but my point is that I didn't believe he died. Andrew didn't believe he died, my two teenage kids didn't think he'd died. No one else I spoke with about the movie in any detail believed he died.

So, I contend that the director did NOT intend to have the audience believe Young Joe was dead at that point. Having a scene where a lead actor has an accident and the scene goes black really makes me think he's been knocked out. That is very subjective ground though. I don't like playing there. I did find this youtube video with the director/writer where he discussed many things about the movie, but the significant portion -which I should have noted the time stamp so I could have linked directly to that part - is when he mentions that the movie is not being shown linearly.



Based firstly, on my thoughts, and secondly, on what the director mentions in the video above (and I'm serious about that, as I actually think the more the director talks about the events of the movie, the more opportunity he has to undermine what I think is a pretty well conceived time-travel story), I think the events of the movie go like this:

• POV is Young Joe. He's a looper. The events unfold until he falls from ladder.
• POV shifts to Old Joe. We see what are, essentially, his memories of when he was a young man and he killed his own loop (who was hooded), we follow his path up until he arrives to meet Young Joe (without his hood, because he decided to change things, which is why he was so late when he arrived).

Now, part of Andrew's original post (which I recommend you read, because I think I've demonstrated I can quite easily spend some time misinterpreting what he says) mentions that the entire movie is invalidated by the death of Old Joe during the scene immediately following the fall from the ladder. Here is that passage:

"The other thing that really bothers me is that the movie didn't happen, and I hate stories that didn't happen. I hate getting to the end and finding out that it was all a dream or a vision or a whatever. I mean, this was as bad as Next with Nicolas Cage. You get to the end and find out that, really, the movie ended right there when Young Joe kills Old Joe at the beginning of the movie. That's it. End of story. Everything else is just "closing the loop" and doesn't actually exist. I really felt cheated."

So, I know I was supposed to get to the second part of the paragraph I quoted earlier, but I've already spent waaayyy too long on this, and I do have a job to go to in the morning, so I can't stay up all night writing this post. 

Based on my interpretation of the movie, the loop was broken. Old Joe that was killed in the field after the scene where Young Joe fell from his apartment wasn't Old Joe, it was a third version of Joe, REALLY Old Joe. His only appearance in the movie was when he was shot and killed. Because Old Joe wasn't the character that died there, he was the man pulling the trigger, the person that looks just like Young Joe, but isn't, because he's from the previous loop, it's actually Old Joe.

I know what I just wrote was convoluted - but I'm pretty sure I'm right about this. I believe that was the writer/director's intent, and that's the way I believe it happened when I saw it. If I understand Andrew correctly here - never a given - and his interpretation is correct, then this is not a very good movie. It falls apart for all the reasons he says it does. 

But why would anyone make that movie? I don't believe it.

An Unexpected Journey - At 48 Frames Per Second

I generally don’t do movie reviews. I don’t think I do reviews very well at all, if I’m being totally honest. Especially for movies. I think part of it is that I get hyper focused on the movie on screen and I either ‘buy in’ and think it’s the greatest thing ever done, or I’m sucked out of the story for some reason and I hate it.

That’s generally how I am with books too, but I’m at least nominally capable of deconstructing a book to find out what I enjoyed and what I didn’t.

Anyway, I took the kids and a nephew and went out to see The Hobbit over the weekend. I shelled out the $100 and made sure we got to see the 3D IMAX HFR edition.

This is me attempting a movie review – I shudder for you all – I’m going to split this into two: The Presentation first, then the actual movie.

Wait, maybe I should make this into three parts. No, that would be too much.

Presentation: The HFR (High Frame Rate) is a reference to the way that this movie was shot. As far as I know, it the first feature film to be shot in 48 fps (frames per second) ever. The promise is that it offers a smoother look, and in 3D – since polarized glasses tend to cut the number of frames each eye sees in half – along with the brightness – it means that the movie experience is much more enjoyable. That’s the intent, at least.

This is supposed to make the movie more engrossing, visually. If you’ve been anywhere on the internet and looked into what other think you’ll have seen that there a lot of people complaining about the experience.

I, for one, certainly found it distracting. But in the end decided I liked it. First, if you’ve ever seen many daytime soap operas, or some of those British shows that pop up on PBS on occasion then you might see some similarities. It’s a bit like watching a movie in fast forward – except that nothing is going fast. It’s a strange thing, and I found myself, especially early in the movie, staring at the screen and watching carefully how things looked. I mean, how can something appear to be moving too quickly, but not be? It’s a mystery.

I think all films shot in the standard film format (24 fps) have kind of tricked us into thinking that is the way things on a giant screen are supposed to look. And the hyper-real 48 fps reminds us of the cheap video productions we’ve all seen on poorly produced shows. It is disconcerting.

It’s funny, as my wife and I have shopped for a television that could also serve as a monitor for my job when I work from home, we’ve ended up having these long, detailed conversations about frame rates on televisions and the typical 24fps standard for movies and how problematic it can be when watching something – like a blu ray disk of a movie. It can cause movements to look unnatural. On a technical level, the sorts of problems that arise can be really difficult for engineers to solve.

Sorry, I digress.

By the time the movie was finished however, I was pretty thrilled with the format. I intend on sneaking out one night this week with the missus and watching it again. This time to see if I can watch the movie without the staring at the screen.

The Movie: For what it’s worth. I thought the movie was fantastic. I feel like it suffers just a bit from ‘Jackson-Bloat’ – a term I made up just now to describe his tendency of stretching a film out longer than its natural length. Some of the early portions of the movie seemed excessively long - but it was charming. I didn't really mind the excessive length. 

I’m reminded a bit of Tolkien who said something like,”…if there is something I regret – it’s that I didn’t make it (LOTR) longer….” I believe Peter Jackson feels the same way about his movies. As this might be an all-time great film if it were just 45 minutes shorter. As it stands, more isn’t better, but it’s still pretty awesome.

If I had a frustration it was that so much of the effort put into foreshadowing al the LOTR stuff makes no sense. I mean, we've all seen LOTR so it's not like we need all that. If some future movie goer watches The Hobbit movies first, then they might get all excited about the LOTR movies, but then get confused because they reintroduce characters that we've already seen. 

For me though, small complaints. I loved the movie. 

Prometheus!

I generally don't review movies here. Mostly because I generally have no real opinions about movies other than either liking them or not. I also realize that I'm a bit late to the game on this one, but I didn't get to see this the weekend it came out because I was in this little town in Texas that, while awesome, wasn't exactly brimming with movie theaters.

Regardless of when I saw the movie, in this case, well, I actually have thoughts about it, real thoughts.

Pretty

1) This movie was awesome.

2) This movie makes no sense.

Well, that's about it. Thanks for reading. Actually, I do think it makes some sense, but not enough of it. I did read this article/blog post the other day about how at one point in an earlier draft of the script, Jesus was an emissary from the aliens and his crucifixion somehow psychically made the alien monsters from the Alien movies... or something. It's fair to say that there was some really weird religious motifs throughout the movie as it was presented. I recommend everyone that's seen the movie and has thought about its bizarreness read it.

Click...HERE ... to read the article.

Chronicle

I'm not around today... weird, I know. But I'm out of town and my internet access is not entirely reliable. Well, that and the last time I went out of town for work I ended up consuming way too much alcohol to try to write. So, I'm just tossing this out here.

I saw Chronicle last weekend, and I must say, I was stunned by how much I enjoyed the movie. Stunned. I went home after and checked it out on Boxofficemojo and saw that it's production budget was... are you ready for this?

$12 million.

Huh? That should have gone on Steven Tremp's list of low budget movies he did for Alex J Cavanaugh's blog on Monday. Because that was money very well spent. 

That's a lot of money, but when $200 million is more or less the new standard for a blockbuster, and some films getting way higher then I'm doubly impressed. Hell, I watched some movie a year or so ago and was wowed by it's use of fx for cheap and I found out later it was something like $40 million. That surprised me. 

So, making a movie like this on that kind of budget was incredibly impressive to me. However, passable fx isn't what made me enjoy the movie. I liked it because it was well done all round. I loved the found footage concept. I'm not a horror fan, so I've missed out on that huge slate of that type movie, Cloverfield was my only real frame of reference, and that flick made me feel like I'd just spent the day on a roller coaster. 

This one kept the shaky cam to a minimum and instead made the brilliant decision to have the story's main character more or less be a videographer. Carefully documenting his life as things go crazy. Later, when things get real crazy, we see lots of security cam footage and bystanders phone vids. Again loved how it was all put together. 

And the story was a pretty good one. It's not really a superhero movie, it's just people who can do crazy things.  Giving folks, especially troubled folks, godlike powers is probably not a good idea. This movie shows how a good kid can snap. I kept thinking how awesome it would have been if Anakin Skywalker's fall from grace had been son wonderfully done in the Star Wars prequels.

I'm impressed. I generally don't do movie reviews, but I liked this one a lot. Good, fun, and felt much more real that the subject matter would have suggested.