Blind Oscars
And so the Oscars™ are upon us once again. It’s that time of the year where the industry comes together to pat each other on the back and say ‘Good Job, You’. And the rest of us apparently care about this. Or about what everyone’s wearing. Or something.
Either way, my flatmates and I don’t really watch any of the movies in the ‘Oscar Genre’ (because, let’s face it, it’s as much a genre as Indie Comedy) and we’re all for abusing ‘science’ for our own petty amusement. In short, we decided to have a competition to see who could pick the most winners, seeing the fewest films, and using the most random method possible.
Basically, what it all boils down to is this: I sent out a form with the 12 major categories (and 5 optional categories) and the respective nominees to 8 people who came up with bizarre and inane methods for picking the winners. Or, as we’ve been calling it “The Blind Oscars”.
And because we love competition, we’ve split up into teams.
(Given the nature of my writing style, and the potential for embarrassment, everyone involved has been given a Cunning Pseudonymn. Chosen at Random.)
Without further ado, here are…
THE TEAMS
Team Science is:
Cookie Slop Trebuchet – a physicist,
Sebastian Fluffy Plap – a different kind of physicist; and,
Associate-Professor Soggybottom – an engineer.
Team Arts is:
Skinny Biscuit The Third – a writer (and ‘conjoined twin’ *coughTeamEffortcough*),
Regina Archibald-Camembert – a different kind of writer; and,
Twinkface Gorgonzola Bling – a publisher.
Finally, Team Control is:
Kitty Von Deutschmark – someone who knows a shitload about film; and,
Squirrel McGee The Mighty – someone who knows jack shit about film.
If you can guess which one is me, you win three internets. (The cost of postage and handling will be deducted from said internets.)
Now that all the needlessly competitive stuff is out of the way, onto the fun part where we make fools of ourselves in new and interesting ways!
Genius.
There’s now fanart for the Unstoppable is an Allegory for Blowjob Ettiquette piece.
Drawn by Brodie O’Mara of Mad Dog McGillicuddy and His Rabid Band of Howler Monkeys, who also did something awesome for Metallurgy.
It’s awesome and NSFW and I would totally watch this movie.
Fucked Up and Farcical: Putting the Anal Back in Analysis – Unstoppable
So, I’ve decided I should be doing something with my inglorious unemployment. Something that appears at least vaguely productive. This’ll do.
I bring you Fucked Up and Farcical: Putting the Anal Back in Analysis.
I intend this to be a series of glib, cynical, and downright contrary analyses of movies I’ve seen, applying the most fucked up and logically illogical arguments I can come up with. Basically, it’s all a farce. None of these arguments are intended to be taken seriously, and are, in fact, completely disposable, potentially offensive, rimshot readings of popular texts.
Interpretation over intention, baby. All the way.
There will be spoilers.
So, without further ado, let us begin.
Unstoppable is an Allegory for Blowjob Etiquette
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World – A Non-Spoilery Review
No witty subject line this time as my brain is currently fit to explode.
Tonight, I saw a preview screening of Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World.
I know, you wish you were me.
I am bursting with the need to talk all about the movie. I am desperate to OMGthatpartwiththe-YES!Iknowitwas-AHAHAHAHABloorandBathurst!–didyouseeOMFG-ASKDFJADVEGDA.
But that could be construed as the hyperbolic aftermath of an Awesome Movie Going Experience. Which, in part, it may well be. It’s enthusiasm and glee and unabashed, starry-eyed awe.
I want people to see this movie. I want to geek out with other people about this movie. But, I don’t want to contribute to the overhype that stops disaffected hipsters from seeing it.
Wait, no. Fuck the disaffected hipsters.
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World is fresh. It’s exciting. It’s, dare I say it? Important.
It was unlike any film I’ve seen before; visually rich and metatextually dense, like a pop-culture pound cake. With sprinkles.
It was filmmaking taken to a new level; one where the CGI enhanced the text, rather than just made it prettier.
It was different from every movie I’ve seen because it was in a different language. But it wasn’t in French, or German, or Czech.
It was in Geek.
It was the ultimate ADD, 83-Firefox-tabs, fifteen-chats-going-at-once, can’t-stop-playing-til-I-reach-a-save-point, just-one-more-song-on-GuitarHero, check-out-this-band-on-YouTube, multitasking, geek addled, twitterpated experience.
It was different because it took everything we – as geeks, as nerds, as fans – are, and made it a part of the visual vernacular.
It was our movie, on our terms, in our language.
See it.
When it comes out.
Or, y’know. Whatever.
Hollywood is losing money because you’re an asshole.
So, I went to a screening of Shutter Island tonight. The cinema was full to brimming; the only seats left were the ones two feet from the screen where you practically had to have your knees up near your ears to fit in the seat. We were lucky. We managed to snag a pair of seats a few rows from the back.
We were surrounded by assholes.
Going to the cinema is not that hard a concept to understand: You sit in the dark for two or so hours watching moving pictures on a screen. It really beggars belief as to how people still manage to find ways to fuck it up.
I find myself going to the cinema less and less as I encounter more and more morons fuckwads assholes fuckwads who have absolutely no concept of how to act in these situations. As such, here’s a short list of ways to not be a fucktard in a cinema:
1. DON’T FUCKING TALK. Not a hard one to grasp, really. You shut your mouth, sound doesn’t come out. It really is a brilliant concept and one you should really take up when the Feature Presentation whatsit comes on.
Example: Tonight at the cinema, we had a couple beside us, a couple behind us, and a couple in front of us who all, at various points in the film, decided it was time for a chitchat. That’s not even including the people dotted around the rest of the cinema who were chatting at a volume we could hear, but not understand. Fun Fact: I don’t care who X character reminds you of, mostly I just want to punch you in the face. [Screening: Shutter Island]
2. DON’T FUCKING TALK. Chances are you’ve seen Fight Club. Deal with it.
Example: You’re sitting in your lounge room watching a movie, the volume’s up, you have a cup of tea and some popcorn, maybe some Girl Scout Cookies. You know what’s awesome about this? You’re alone! You can talk as much as you want! You’re not going to get my fist in your face if you keep talking throughout! AMAZING! Stay there. Do not leave the house. Do not inflict your stupidity on a large group of people who aren’t going to rock the boat and tell you to shut up because they don’t want a meat thermometer to the throat. [Screening: Daybreakers]
3. DON’T FUCKING TALK. I’d really love to stop repeating myself, but considering you haven’t grasped the concept of not fucking talking in a fucking cinema after 100 fucking years of cinematic history, chances are you’ve been beaten with the moron stick and still aren’t quite grasping the concept.
Example: Regardless of what language you’re speaking, WE CAN STILL HEAR YOU. STFU and STFD. Assholes. [Screening: Shutter Island and Where The Wild Things Are]
4. DON’T FUCKING TALK. Sing it with me, you have to know the words by now.
Example: Nobody cares if you’re from New Foundland. Nobody cares if you want the hypospray McCoy used on Kirk. Nobody cares whether or not you can feel your ass. Nobody cares what you think. And you know why? You’re not J.J. Abrams and you didn’t work your ass off to show off your lens flares. Also, you’re nowhere near as attractive as Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, or that weird nobbly thing that hung out with Scotty on the ice planet. And you smell like feet. (Addendum: Another reason to not attend the cinema: if you have consumption and are sucking back Nyquil like mother’s milk while chunkily coughing on the Australian girl sitting beside you. Assface.) [Screening: Motherfucking Star Trek. TWICE.]
5. DON’T FUCKING TALK. Urge to kill rising.
Example: Just because your baby can’t form words yet, doesn’t mean you should bring it to a late night screening of an R rated movie. We can hear it. We can hear you calming it. We are all imagining you being torn apart by ravening hoards of the undead. [Screening: Zombieland and Legion.]
In conclusion: STFD. STFU. Watch the damn movie.
And the survey says… Failboat!
Updates coming, I promise!
I got caught up in volunteering for a couple of film festivals, started a new internship at a tv production company, and am now in the process of finding a place and moving.
The good news is that I’m working on a ridiculously overdue post of TIFF reviews, and I’m developing a short that we’re hoping to shoot in late July-Early August!
Busy, busy, busy. And stuff.
So, until I get a chance to sit down and actually write stuff, here’s a picture of my cat.
Weighing In: The Polanski Petition and the Semantic Divide
Right now, I’m supposed to be doing two things: 1.) Recovering from a heinous case of the flu, and 2.) Writing up my TIFF reviews. Instead, I’m caught up in the anger and confusion of the Polanski arrest and subsequent petition for his release.
It’s a horrible position to be in. To feel vindicated that he finally got what was coming, and yet also to see why the petition has merit. It’s awful to watch people get caught up in the mob mentality of baying for his blood and wanting to be a part of that, too.
For the record, I would like nothing more than to see Polanski strung up by his balls while a rabid skunk gnaws on his face. Rape is rape. Rape of a thirteen year old is rape. There’s none of this “rape-rape” distinction bollocks. Rape is rape is rape and should be punished as such. Have I said rape enough that you’re starting to get the picture? Or do you need the added bonus of drugging and sodomy? As if one violation weren’t enough.
The fact of the matter is that Polanski should have been arrested and put to work in the salt mines years ago. Without a canary. But that’s not what I’m seeing the backlash against. Well, not solely.
There’s a little matter of the petition.
Le cinéma soutient Roman Polanski / Petition for Roman Polanski
For some bizarre reason, the list of signatories is a large, practically incomprehensible block of text with no indication of exactly how many people have signed. That’s not the issue. The issue is that of the names on there, some of them are people many of us admire (Tilda Swinton, Pedro Almodovar, Alfonso Cuaron, Natalie Portman, just to name a few), some are people whose name we see on that list and think Well, of course he’d be there (Woody Allen, anyone?), and some of them are people who the North American-centric people haven’t heard of and would have ‘no problem never supporting again because they’re nobody Europeans’. (Paraphrased and not sourced because I got incensed and closed the window after reading that quote. Ass.)
I have seen in so many places people lashing out at the people who have dared to sign the petition: They support child rape! They’re no better than Polanski himself! They all must be pedophiles! They want to see your children raped! How can they support such a monster?!
How can we ever watch a movie with/by [X] again without knowing that he/she supports such a despicable pervert?
The answer is, simply, you don’t have to.
The petition is nothing to do with what Polanski did. I admit, I was shocked when I, having not read the petition itself, saw all those names of people I admire coming out in support of freeing Polanski. I felt nauseous thinking about all those movies I’d never be able to watch without a twitch at the back of my mind pointing out all the assholes on the screen.
Then I read the petition.
I have always said that anyone who turns to Hollywood and Celebrities for political or legal information and opinions are Dumbass Morons. If you want information, look it up your damn self and don’t rely on some pretty mouthpiece to tell you what to think, because if there’s one thing clear about the spotlight: it makes you dumb.
The petition is poorly phrased and, in places, completely misleading. It has information that should not be in a formal petition which skews the message into a bad place. It is, in short, a fairly terrible petition, semantically speaking.
The petition, when read without the overwhelming urge to flay Polanski and rub salt in his wounds, is not about Polanski at all. It’s about the arrest, not who or what the arrest was for. It is very simply, about the fact that filmmakers need to be able to go to film festivals to present their films without worrying about political backlash from any number of directions.
The fact that Polanski was the first filmmaker to be arrested in such a way is damning for the cause and presents a slippery slope for any other filmmaker who may be presenting a film with an undesirable view of his or her home country, political or religious factions, or any number of subjects or reasons.
If you replace “Roman Polanski” with “Salman Rushdie” a majority of people would be all over that petition like white on rice. He wrote a book, he fled the country. The only difference is that his life literally was in danger, and he didn’t have a poorly worded petition on his tail. (Also the lack of rape in his story.) My argument stands.
If Salman Rushdie had been arrested in a neutral country and extradited back to a place where he would face the death sentence, this petition would stand as is.
But, there are two things I’m seeing a lot of people get caught up on. First, is the second paragraph:
His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals.
Calling ‘rape’ a ‘case of morals’ is just plain stupid. Admittedly, this comes from a Western background where, ideally, rape is Just Not On. (The facts and statistics that point out that that this just isn’t true for anyone except women are cause for another post, which I am absolutely not qualified to write.) In what seems to be an effort to not make the petition about the fact that Polanski plead guilty to a rape charge, the writer of the petition has highlighted the fact.
Strike one.
Filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians – everyone involved in international filmmaking – want him to know that he has their support and friendship.
There is absolutely no cause for this to be in the petition. Given what the petition is actually about, the arrest and extradition from a neutral country, and not about the crime itself, then the support and friendship of the filmmakers, actors, producers and technicians – everyone involved in international filmmaking** is absolutely irrelevant.
Strike two.
Had this petition been launched with any case other than Polanski’s, it would have had the potential to unite the filmmakers of the world against improper arrests and the potential for them to be used as censorial acts.
Unfortunately, we got Polanski. And instead of being able to unite against potential censorship and the danger future filmmakers may find themselves in, we get to rage at Tilda Swinton for daring to put her name to a petition that doesn’t know it’s arse from a hole in the ground.
So, while I agree that Polanski should absolutely face justice and serve his time, I cannot condone the arrest under the circumstances. It’s a paradox of Schrödinger’s proportions. And that, of course, can only lead to an angry, brainsore mob.
**(So, technically, that includes me. Thanks for asking. DENIED. See: Nads & Rabid Skunk)
TV Round Up…
Alrighty. Figure I’d put this up for posterity’s sake. These are the shows that currently occupy my viewing time. I rarely turn the TV on unless there’s something I actually want to watch on, and these are it. Them. Thingy.
Must Watch
The shows that I absolutely cannot miss.
Chuck
I’ve already spazzed my pants over how much I like Chuck, so I’ll just leave it at that. I will say that, as it’s on at the same time as The Big Bang Theory, I usually watch BBT and then wait for one of the later showings of Chuck. (This is why having Satellite sometimes doesn’t suck; I get a three hour timeshift on everything.)
Dirty Jobs
I often make the mistake of watching this while eating dinner. Still, I’ve loved this show since I found out they pixellate it when anybody vomits. Now if they’d just scramble the vomit audio, it’d be fantastic.
Flashpoint
Absolutely genius show. The editing, the acting and the writing all make me positively gleeful. Also, it made me cry once. I never cry. (I can count the number of times TV/Film have made me cry on one hand. And still have three fingers free.) It’s come a long way from the pilot episode that I described as ‘Eliot DiMauro, The Pink Ranger, and a guy that looks like Josh Charles walk into a hostage situation…’
Read more
Don’t judge a book by its cover… But feel free to judge a TV show by its title sequence. (Part 2)
["...hopefully in the next couple of days." apparently does not take into account a loss in the family, sliding into two weeks in New York, and the onset of the dreaded flu. AND 23 hours without power in temperatures peaking at -17 degrees celsius. Go, go Toronto! Last time I try to give anything close to a definitive answer. Fr Srs.]
And so it continues: gloriously abstract TV titles that contribute effectively to the creation of the thematic identity of the program. (Continued from Part 1 here.)
I’ve been thrown for a bit of a loop here as one of the title sequences I had searched down is no longer available on YouTube thanks to a copyright claim by NBC Universal. Thanks, ever so much. Just for that, I’m not even going to mention the title of the show, or give it some free advertising. No need to thank me, I’m only paying you the same courtesy you pay your viewing audience. (When will you learn? No, seriously. I want a succinct, precise answer.)
I will however pimp shows from some of your competitors outside the jump: Pushing Daisies. Dexter. True Blood. Carnivale. Flashpoint. Dirty Jobs. Nip/Tuck. The Big Bang Theory. Grey’s Anatomy. Supernatural. Stargate: Atlantis. Twin Peaks. Psych. Reaper. Robot Chicken. The Young Ones.
All of those are on other networks. Some of them don’t even fit the criteria for this post. Some of those have been cancelled. Some of them haven’t been on TV in decades. What matters is I like all of them.
Also, you suck.
MOVING ON.
The remaining titles are after the jump. I haven’t figured out what to replace the [SHOW THAT WILL NOT BE NAMED] titles yet, so there may only be four. I sorted it. There are five.
Don’t judge a book by its cover… But feel free to judge a TV show by its title sequence. (Part 1)
First up, apologies for the lack of updates. I was a little bit busy moving to Canada. I’m in Toronto and I have bought boots and a jacket and gloves and I still manage to nearly lose my limbs to frostbite every time I step outside. I reserve the right to shout “The sky is falling!” whenever it snows. Like right now.
Moving on!
I love TV, that’s no secret. I love episodic and serialised drama, comedy, pseudo-horror, and the like. I love watching the characters grow and develop within the realms of their own little worlds and plots. I love the little intrigues and mysteries and the various permutations of the basic narrative structure.
I love title sequences.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve been putting together a list of title sequences from various TV shows that use the minute or so of title time to go beyond a simple ‘This is X person, This is Y person, they are in this show’ structure and use the time to create a textual representation of the character of the show itself. These types of titles tend to use the juxtaposition of images to create a mood and an ideology–a thematic identity–for the show beyond the pecking order of the main stars.
These may seem like fairly obvious and straightforward concepts; in our celebrity driven culture, the title sequence is designed primarily to let the audience know who is in the show coupled with a vague idea of what the show is about. But, and this is what grabs me by the short and curlies and makes me sit up and pay attention, some title sequences go far beyond these basic expectations. Some shows abandon the ‘Heroic Headshot, Shot from Show, Sympathetic Headshot, Shot from Show, And Anthony Stewart Head as Giles, Title of Show Plate’ format, and create tiny snippets of art unto themselves. They divulge the character of the show as an entity in itself and, often, draw you into the world of the show as something beyond a way to sustain the live characters and the plotlines.
Now, this whole fascination I have with short form textual analysis stems from my study into Eisensteinian Montage as applied to Music Videos. It’s a long (and potentially boring for anyone not interested in film theory) story, but if you want to know more, my essay on the subject is here. I’ve also recently found Art of the Title which goes beyond the restrictions I’ve set (only TV, abstract form) to show the titles of films and TV as mini works of art.
Now, I’ve compiled a collection of ten television title sequences that best display (in my opinion) the use of the title sequence as a means to firmly present the character of the show as a whole through abstracted means; i.e. no headshots, textually rich, and aiming to develop the character of the show as a whole. The only limitation on this little study was what I was able to find on YouTube and my own viewing habits.
Due to the fact that I’m apparently a long winded bag when it comes to analysing and squeeing over things I enjoy, I’m splitting them up into two posts.
Beyond the jump, are the first five. All the videos are embedded. So, dial-up beware.