Just a Little Bit of History Repeating

PERSEPOLIS

Whether the history will be Tehran in 1979 or Beijing in 1989 is still up in the air, however.

I have to confess, I haven't been following the recent events in Iran all that closely. I haven't really followed the news in general that much since moving to DC, since I haven't had a daily paper handy, and I've never been in the habit of poring over news or news-aggregating websites. Honestly, my main source of news is the "In the news" section of Wikipedia (my homepage), so I generally stay abreast of major events, but don't necessarily know every detail as it appears on CNN.com or The Huffington Post.

(The exception to this is when I'm in the news myself . . . or almost in the news, as was the case Monday with the DC train wreck. I was on my way home when it happened, only a couple stops away; I was heading the opposite direction, so luckily there was never any danger of my being on one of the trains that crashed. But I did have to sit on my train between stations for forty minutes or so, while they periodically told us there was an "electrical problem" up ahead. They finally took us back to the last station we passed and let us off, and I took a (very crowded) bus home. It wasn't a pleasant evening for sure, but I'm still counting my blessings considering what happened to a lot of other people.)

I have seen Persepolis (as you can see by perusing my Honorable Mentions of 2008), and I think it did a wonderful job of giving one person's ground-level view of major historical events. I also liked how the focus was almost solely on Marjane's life, of which the revolution was only one part; that ensured its human perspective rather than making it just an historical pageant. And I too loved the animation; while Pixar's been firing on all cylinders both artistically and narratively for almost fifteen years straight, it's nice to see some films buck the CG bandwagon, especially when they do so in a particularly abstracted and expressionistic (i.e., non-Disneyfied) way. I too have seen Waltz with Bashir and Linklater's Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, all of them very good. (And if you like that style of animation, I'll make sure to show you some Frisky Dingo when you move here.) Also, on my Netflix queque (though currently in slot 85, so don't expect a review any time soon) is Azur and Asmar (trailer), a French CG children's film with such a distinctive and intriguing visual style that I have to check it out.

To add my two historical cents (as opposed to cinematic), frankly I'm astounded by how this revolution seems to parallel the one thirty years ago. In particular, the fact that the military seems to be largely sitting by the sidelines while the regime and the protesters vie for power. In 1979, the fact that the military didn't come to the Shah's defense spelt the end for his regime. But another lesson we should take from 1979 is that once a power vacuum is created, it isn't always filled by the people who did the leg work of removing the old regime (i.e., the liberals who'd been demonstrating against the Shah throughout the late '70s; similarly, it wasn't the Bolsheviks who brought the tsarist regime down in 1917, though they ended up being the beneficiaries).

I would say that I hope that things in Iran turn out well in the end, but I remember the line from Watchmen (in both the comic book and the film): "Nothing ends. Nothing ever ends."

Hoping for a sequel

PERSEPOLIS. Since I have not been a particular punctual movie-goer lately, I figure I can at least be timely in another way. Perhaps like me, you have been glued to -- well, your computer lately to follow the news of what is happening in Iran. As this is not a political blog I will not get into the issue to much except for the context to which it affects a reviewing of Persepolis (TRAILER), a film that I found on my mind a lot lately and as I watched it again, I found the context to be uncanny. This film, based upon autobiographical comic book (or graphic novel if you prefer) by co-director Marjane Satrapi, tells the story of growing up through the Iranian revolution of 1979, the clerical crackdown that followed, and the alienation of leaving her homeland to find freedom.

I assume you have seen the movie, and if not -- go see it. Today. Stop what you are doing because it is available on Netflix Watch it Now. First and foremost, it is a beautiful movie. Many movies have attempted to recreate comic books on film but this one really nails it. Very few animation movies are made without aid of computer-generated images, and as great as some of the Pixar movies have been, there is something particularly appealing in true animation. The design of the nearly all black-and-white movie mixes the realism of telling a true story with the imagination of a creative girl and young woman caged by an restrictive regime. There are many images that caught my eye and the one that comes first to mind is the first scene after the new religious law and showed a group of schoolgirls as white faces against a black backdrop and then moves perspective so show the back background is really the black veil that causes them all to blend together. Also it is great to see the growth of animation being used here and in works like Waltz With Bashir and the work of Richard Linklater (I note this is among MANY others, including a lot of Japanese works, which I admit I am not as familiar with) to explore more serious subjects than adventure and princesses or toys.

We discussed earlier in our blogging endeavor the topic of realism in movies and I expressed my disdain for movies that do not truthfully represent actual events. This movie is an example of why I feel this way. To say that something is "just a movie" does a great disservice to the medium. Watching this movie certainly adds to my understanding of what I am seeing on the streets in Tehran right now as I could easily see Marjane throwing on a green scarf and joining. Sure I would not count on the little history lesson given in the movie as my only historical background to what is happening there, but I would certainly say that providing a perspective that helps a viewer be transported to a different reality and comprehend a different perspective is powerful. Having already seen this movie and read Reading Lolita in Tehran (which one could certainly argue is the Oprah Book Club school of history), what was happening on the streets over the last couple of weeks seemed to make sense because they helped me understand the people in the country do not en masse fall in line with their rulers but instead are more liberal -- especially in regard to the role of women -- than the clerics and, for the most part, many of their neighbors.

One of the fascinating aspects of this Iranian uprising has been that we will have different record of what has happened there through the ability of those inside the country to get their own voice heard. Instead of films made 25 years after a revolution, we have video being shot and distributed now directly from Iranians. There is probably nothing I have watched in quite some time that shook me as much as that of the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, which I'm guessing you have watched or at least heard of by now. I will not embed or link to the video here, but those who have not seen it should do a Google search and find it. The memory of watching the life leave Neda's eyes is something I will never forget, but it still will not be able to reach me or many others in a way that a film has a particularly effective ability. While the video of Neda gives immediate historical context, a movie like Persepolis is able to take a broader picture using art and storytelling. The movie ends with Marjane's mother putting her on a plane to leave Tehran and telling her not to come back, and I found myself wishing the movie would continue and I could see her come back. So many Iranians out there who, like Marjane deeply love their country, are trying to help turn it into a country where people like her will not want to leave. Although the movie never goes that far, I can see Marjane standing among those crowds and her story helps me understand why they are there. And it makes me want to see a sequel where she returns to an Iran where she has the freedom that caused her to leave.

Barton-Fink-ism

So I saw this article today on CHUD, about Darren Aronofsky's plans to direct a remake of RoboCop. First off, I have to wonder whether there are actually people out there who think a new RoboCop movie should be made. The first one was actually kind of surprising for the amount of social and political satire Paul Verhoeven was able to get into a particularly violent (maybe even sadistic) '80s sci-fi/action movie; I haven't seen the sequels, but I've heard that the franchise's decline was precipitous. Are there actually people out there who are clamoring for this? Of course, I said the same thing when I heard that they were making movies about Transformers and Iron Man (in the latter's case, not because I thought it was a dumb idea, but because Iron Man was never at that top Spider-Man/X-Men/Fantastic Four/Hulk level in the Marvel pantheon). As those films' respective box-office numbers showed, there apparently were audiences out there for movies about toy robots and second-tier super heroes.

My main concern, though, isn't with the project itself, it's with the fact that Aronofsky is slated to direct it. As you know, I absolutely love The Fountain. Watching it for the first time may have been the most moving experience I've ever had in a theater. His prior films, Pi and Requiem for a Dream, are similarly visionary, and he's just coming off of his most critically acclaimed film yet, The Wrestler. So what in God's name is he doing making a remake of RoboCop? Is this how he's going to spend the filmmaking capital The Wrestler gained him, making a movie nobody needs and nobody with a shred of intelligence wants? Baffling.

This goes beyond this particular project and this particular filmmaker to a trend evident for the past few years of talented, visionary filmmakers making big-budget, mainstream popcorn flicks: Ang Lee with Hulk, Chris Nolan with the new Batman franchise, Sam Raimi with the Spider-Man franchise. I'm not saying that those films are bad—The Dark Knight and the first two Spider-Man films were quite good—but it seems that they could be doing more with their time and energy. Raimi's case might be a little different, since he hadn't really established himself as a well known director outside of the Evil Dead trilogy. But Ang Lee had made The Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon by the time he made Hulk, and Nolan had made Memento and Insomnia when he signed on for Batman Begins; coming off critically acclaimed, relatively successful (in Crouching Tiger's case, extremely successful) films, I have a hard time believing that they felt they needed to make some super hero movies to finance their "passion projects" or to keep the cinematic world's attention.

When I saw the CHUD article, the first think I thought of was Barton Fink, whose social-realist playwright leaves New York to write scripts for wrestling movies in Hollywood. That in turn reminded me of the real-life example of Faulkner, whose Hollywood screenwriting in the 1940s inspired Barton Fink in general and, obviously, John Mahoney's character in particular. During that time Faulkner wrote for some good films, including Howard Hawks's Bogart-Bacall classics To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep, but it's nevertheless considered a low point in his career brought on by financial need rather than creative vision. In the same way, as good as some of their mainstream films have been, I can't imagine that these are really the kinds of stories that filmmakers like Aronofsky, Nolan, or Raimi are longing to tell. What I don't get, though, is their motivation; are these guys really so hard up for cash, as Faulkner was, that they need to make huge-budget, $200- to $300-million-grossing summer spectacles to finance, say, another Wrestler or Memento?

Another recent topic here, Stanley Kubrick, in some respects seems to have faced similar moments in his forty-plus-year career. In 1960 he directed Spartacus, one of the better examples of the late-'50s, early-'60s historical epics but nonetheless merely that; but his films prior to Spartacus had been relatively small (none had a budget of more than $1 million), and he hadn't yet made his name in the cinematic world (he only got the Spartacus job at Kirk Douglas's insistance). Twenty years later he directed The Shining; though a film about a haunted hotel based on a Stephen King novel sounds like pure paycheck work for someone like Kubrick, he ended up making one of the greatest, most definitive horror films of all time, with the end product being much more a Kubrick film than a King adaptation (hence King's dislike of it). Moreover, despite King's reputation even then as an author of pulpy airplane and beach fare, film adaptations of his work may not have gotten their own dubious reputation yet; the only prior adaptation had been Brian De Palma's critically praised Carrie. So I don't think Kubrick fits into what we're seeing nowadays, despite superficial similarities: When he made Spartacus he hadn't yet had his Crouching Tiger, Memento, or Wrestler to put him on the map, and when he made The Shining he was so established and confident that he wasn't at all limited by the fact that he was adapting a mainstream horror novel.

So what do you think of this phenomenon? Does it trouble or disappoint you the way it does me? Do you think it will continue, and that other respected filmmakers will get in on the act? Can we expect to see the Coen Brothers doing Aquaman soon? Paul Thomas Anderson doing Dino-Riders? Fincher doing Captain Planet? Tarantino doing Luke Cage and Iron Fist? (Actually, I think he'd jump at that; what better way to combine his two great loves, blaxploitation and martial arts?) Or do you not mind their taking a break from more visionary or serious fare to make mainstream, big-budget spectacles?

P.S. — I gotta say, I love the new blurb. At this point, I think that the Republicans support the Second Amendment solely so that they can shoot themselves in the foot.

In Which I Come to a Poor, Helpless Movie Star's Defense...Sort Of

First, let me reiterate that it's not as though I think that Russell Crowe is the greatest actor of his generation and how dare you doubt his thespian genius or anything like that. His performances are serviceable and often engaging, but he's never moved me to tears or anything. I only said something because I thought it was kind of strange and interesting that you expressed such a strong opinion about him as an actor—not just a particular performance, but his performances in general. I honestly can't think of a dramatic actor whom I dislike in general—though there are particular performances I dislike, and plenty of actors I don't especially like or dislike, and there are certainly non-dramatic actors whom I generally avoid (Rob Schneider, the majority of Adam Sandler, just about all of Eddie Murphy since 1990, etc.)—so I was intrigued by your dislike, especially considering that he's a pretty well respected actor.

Your dislike of Crowe seems to stem from two sources: He plays a "tough guy" when he shouldn't, and his performances are often overrated. As for the second criticism, there's not really much to discuss since it's simply a subjective matter of opinion; either you think his performances warrant the praise they've received, or you don't. For my part, I don't think he deserved to win an Oscar for Gladiator (I probably would've gone with Bardem in Before Night Falls that year), so that performance at least was overrated in my opinion. (That is, assuming that an Oscar win is definitive evidence of how the public "rates" a particular actor.) Of the films you mentioned, I haven't seen The Insider, and I wouldn't call his performance in American Gangster overrated; I thought he did a good job of playing down his natural charm and establishing a dichotomous contrast between his character and Denzel's, though he didn't blow me away or anything.

As for your first criticism, I don't think I've seen enough of his "non-tough-guy" films to be able to say that he lets inappropriate tough-guy elements seep into his performances there. The only example of this you gave was State of Play, which I haven't seen; from what I can tell, his characters in The Insider, Body of Lies, and A Good Year don't seem like tough guys, but I haven't seen those either, so again I can't say. I have seen A Beautiful Mind, and, despite its other faults, I can't say he played John Nash as a tough guy at all. I've also seen Master and Commander (though not since it came out, so my memory may be a little rusty), and, in addition to suggesting that you muster the interest to see it, I think it offers an example of a performance by Crowe that's neither "tough-guy" nor "non-tough-guy." His character is certainly very much in control of the people around him and the situations before him (hence the title, I guess), but in the manner of a gentleman-captain in the Royal Navy, not a brutal '50s cop, a Roman gladiator, or the leader of a gang of Old West bandits; he's formidable to be sure, but not what you'd call a "tough guy."

I'm sorry if this post seems to be mostly my nitpicking about your criticisms about Crowe rather than a stalwart defense of him on his merits, but, as I said before, I just don't feel that strongly about him one way or the other. My opinion of him is that he's made some good movies (L.A. Confidential, Master and Commander, Gladiator to an extent), some stomach-turning schmaltz (A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, A Good Year), and some respectable but not particularly memorable work that falls somewhere in between (American Gangster, 3:10 to Yuma). Given that you don't like him and I don't really care enough either to agree with you or to defend him, I think we can lay the Great Blogospheric Russell Crowe Debate That Never Was of 2009 to rest.

I hope I don't get hit with a phone for this

So Russell Crowe. You asked about my dislike of the guy and here you go. I see that he is in a movie and, for me, that does not register in the "good" column when deciding whether or not to see it. As for why that is the case, part of it is more instinctual and, I admit, I had not really thought of exactly what it is that bothers me about him. But here is the thing: I'm tired of seeing characters being played as a Russell Crowe version. Either it is just the way he is or it has some sort of need to always be a tough guy, but it seems like he always needs to be a tough-guy version of the character.

Sometimes it works and I will admit there are Russell Crowe movies I have liked -- some quite a bit. L.A. Confidential was a great movie and allowed Crowe to be, well, a hothead tough-guy cop. I think Gladiator is pretty self-explanatory. And 3:10 to Yuma? Tough guy. When he's doing that, I'm fine with it. When he's not playing a tough guy, though, his characters somehow turn into tough guys frequently, like his character in State of Play which diverges strikingly from both the original character and any reporter I ever met.

Then I can't help but note that a number of times either the movie or his performance have been highly overrated. I admit people might disagree with me on some of these, but I would Include movies like The Insider (great movie, but his American accent was distractingly awful among other problems with him in that movie) and American Gangster (both movie and performance were overrated for me). I think my real distance for him might have started with A Beautiful Mind, which initially came off as sweet but watching again was saccharine. And there was the fact that they took what could have been a fascinating story about a truly brilliant man with an incredible story and turned it into a romance by changing the facts. And he went for the full Rain Man in that movie.

I do not refuse to see a movie just because it has Crowe and in fact am quite intrigued by the Ridley Scott-helmed Robin Hood that he is filming. But on the other hand I have no interest in ever seeing Master and Commander or Cinderella Man. My best way to summarize this is that "Russell Crowe movies" do not sound good to me as I find the "starring Russell Crowe" character to be irritating. But if there is a good movie that he is a part of, I do think he often has some talent to bring to the table that I can enjoy. I'm still not sure that makes sense, but that's what I think of Russell Crowe.

This Just In: Book Critics "On Crack," Claims Matt

THE SHINING

See, as the post title shows, you don't need a fancy "journalism degree" to come up with some eye-catching headlines! Enjoy your forthcoming flamewar with the world of literary criticism.

Again, you've picked a topic that I'm not particularly knowledgeable about. I've never read a Stephen King novel, and though I've seen several films based on his novels over the years—Carrie, The Shining, Silver Bullet, Stand by Me, The Running Man (more of a "Schwarzenegger movie" than a "Stephen King movie"), Pet Sematary, Misery, The Shawshank Redemption, 1408, which turn out to be only a fraction of the total adaptations; I knew he'd been adapted a lot, but I had no idea! There were three King films in 1983 and 1990 each, not even counting sequels—I've by no means sought them out. "Based on the novel by Stephen King" typically isn't a cinematic mark of quality. I'll mostly talk about one of the exceptions to that, The Shining.

First off, let me say that I've never been a big horror-movie guy. As far as I can remember, the number of horror films I've seen more than once or twice can be counted on one hand, and that's being generous by counting quasi-horror films: The Shining, Rosemary's Baby, Psycho (horror/suspense), and Alien (horror/sci-fi). I've never read a horror novel either, not even "Goosebumps" as a kid. Take from that what you will.

There's a lot to say about The Shining. In terms of its craftsmanship it's instantly recognizable as a Kubrick film: painstaking cinematography, long (often lingering) shots, and a sense of isolation and detachment. While the subjects that his films portray are as varied as one could imagine—a military courtroom drama, a meditative space epic of vast scope, a darkly satirical near-future dystopia, an eighteenth-century period piece, the Vietnam War, to name some examples—the way that they're portrayed is pretty consistent, and consistently brilliant and challenging. So the fact that The Shining had a master filmmaker like Kubrick at the helm makes it pretty inarguable, in my opinion, that it is the greatest film to be made of a King story.

SRELIOPS

The only ground on which that assertion could justifiably be questioned is how much of a "Stephen King movie" it actually is. I've read that King was unhappy with the deviations that Kubrick made from his novel, but from what I've heard the main change that he was unhappy with was the ending, namely the fact that Jack doesn't redeem himself. (Funny, since Anthony Burgess had the very same complaint about Kubrick's Alex in A Clockwork Orange; in Barry Lyndon, on the other hand, Kubrick did give the protagonist some final redemption, whereas Thackeray didn't.)

I hadn't heard that King's problem with Kubrick's adaptation was a perceived failure to include alcoholism and family dynamics. If so, my guess would be that his complaint is that those issues are dealt with differently from in the novel, since they're certainly present in the film—indeed, they're front and center. What I've always gotten from the film is that Jack's madness is merely an extreme escalation of symptoms already present in him, which the hotel uses alcohol to bring out and amplify. I always got the sense that Jack feels emasculated by his family, particularly by how contemporary society was changing a husband and father's relationship to his family. He always wanted to play the benevolent but dominant paterfamilias, making decisions for them (like moving to the Overlook) and being the breadwinner (through his writing). But that family model was increasingly becoming a thing of the past (of, for instance, the 1920s), and as a result Jack feels impotent (his writer's block) and resentful (his description in the bar of how he broke Danny's arm). The Overlook represents a return to that older family dynamic, characterized by authority and stability—"You are the caretaker. You have always been the caretaker."—without the interference of "outsiders" and "willful boys." Jack's falling off the wagon represents a reversion to selfishness, in which wife and children are merely appendages of the paterfamilias's ego, and his homicidal insanity is a reassertion of old-school paternal authority. To me, the film is all about family dynamics, though maybe not the ones that King wrote about.

SPOILERS AREN'T HERE, MRS. TORRANCE

And the planets must be in alignment or something, because this weekend it's being shown at midnight screenings at E Street Cinema here in DC. One of my greatest cinematic pleasures is seeing a film I know only from DVD or VHS on the big screen for the first time. Last fall it was Aliens, a couple weeks ago it was A Clockwork Orange (the opening credits and first scene demand theater viewing), and this weekend I'll add The Shining to that list.

P.S. — In anticipation of rewatching the first five seasons of Lost before the sixth season begins, I suggest you check out this forum thread from CHUD. They've got some really fascinating insights and discussions on there, and it hasn't gotten so long yet that you can't read it from the beginning. It'll definitely get your first-season juices flowing.

The horror, the horror

CUJO. THE SHINING. STAND BY ME. DOLORES CLAIBORNE. So I think I mentioned to you that I am indulging in some pulp reading this summer in order to prepare for the next season of Lost. I am not generally much of a genre reader and it has been years since I have read such a novel. It seems to me I went through a bit of a John Grisham kick, although it seems to be that was in the mid-1990s. The point of this prologue is that I was a bit unprepared for cracking open The Stand, by one of the more respected genre writers, Stephen King. He is often cited by book critics and such as one who blurs the lines between pulp and literature and I will have to say that unless either things are going to change drastically in the book I am reading or his other novels are quite different, I think those critics must be on crack. As I found myself ruminating on King's writing, by happenstance I watched two films based on his writings and was considering how much better they were than the novel thus far. I have watched a number of other King-inspired movies and decided to take a quick look and see how many films have been made from his canon --- roughly 40, not including sequels and remakes! And that doesn't even count the roughly 20 or so television products. So I thougt I would write a bit about our culture's most prolific creator of horror.

The reason I think King has become so famous and respected must be more for his ideas than his craftsmanship, which is why it works well for a conversion to film because another writer can hone some of what are appearing to me as his shorfalls as a writer. Chief among these critical flaws is his dialogue. In my announcement that I had not read genre fiction in a while, I was hedging my bets a bit here on this claim. Perhaps it is common for books that are focused on a genre to have cringe-worthy dialogue, and I guess that is somewhat of an excuse -- he's not worse than any of his competitors would be the argument. Another more logical result of the limitaitons of the world in which he writes is the dumbing-down of his characters. I guess I can understand that when you are writing a book solely for entertainment, one does not want the reader to have to think too much about characters and instead get right to the action. So instead we get rather cliched, cardboard-cutout characters. So far in The Stand I have such characters as the irresponsible one-hit pop star (from whom I have heard the character Charlie Pace of Lost was influenced), the smart-alleck young woman who who gets knocked up (and whom I always picture as Ellen Page when I read her sections), and the grissly small-town guy who doesn't put up with any guff from the big, bad federal government. I'm still awaiting for the arrival of the non-stock character.

So why is King so famous? Well, I'm too early into The Stand to tell directly from this book (200 pages in the the flu pandemic that, along with the military, is pretty much wiping out the population to set the stage for the good-vs.-evil battle for which I am reading the book), but what I can discern from it thus far and from his movies is that the plot is much stronger than the craftsmanship. The reason why his movies (sometimes) turn out well is that the plotlines often sound like pitches for a movie and allow the filmmaker to either fill in the blanks that King leaves out or take advantage of the fact that a genre film needs real characters even less than a book. Although I have not seen anywhere near all 40 films, I have seen a few and the first that comes to mind as an example of this is Cujo. I watched the movie during the summer I lived in Birmingham, when I watched a lot of supposedly scary movies from the library in order to make my boring life feel slightly more interesting. I found Cujo to be a rather well-made thriller -- albeit one without a whole lot of emotional connection to the main characters. We just got a little bit of a basic, human necessity to survive and protect one's offspring and the terror the woman was going through just made sense.

Arguably the best film to be made of a King story is The Shining, for which the author himself harbors much misgivings. He complains, from what Wikipedia says, about various things such as the casting of Jack Nicholson, but what seems likely to be his real issue is that it was not a good adaptation because it failed to include the issues of alcoholism and family dynamics of his novel. From what little I have read thus far, I am willing to say already that my guess is Stanley Kubrick made the right move. King's treatment of human interaction and issues beyond pushing the plot forward seem to be both awkward and pedestrian and I would imagine much is the same in The Shining. I find the movie to be one of the most physcologically terrifying movies I have ever seen. The buildup is put together so smoothly and the readers own sense of confusion and fear is matched by those of the characters and by the end of the film we have just gone through a rather terrifying tale, but one that also made the viewer think along the way.

I will not write about every King-inspired movie (no on The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, in case you were wondering), but I would like to touch on the two movies I saw recently that explain how his work translates well into film. Dolores Claiborne was added to my queue because it was written by one of my current favorites, Tony Gilroy. I definitely saw his stamp on the movie and can see how this story that questions whether a beaten-down woman played by Kathy Bates (who gave one of her best preformances in the King-inspired Misery) who was once suspected of killing her husband of now doing the same to her employer. This story setup works well for what has become Gilroy's style of questioning point of view and using the art of the reveal to drive tension between events happening at different points in time. The movie expanded the role of the title character's daughter (played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) to work as the center from which the Dolores of past and present revolve. Despite Leigh's character being a bit of a cliche and a scene at the end of the movie that wrapped up the story a too easily, it was quite a good, methodical movie.

The movie that I think helps me understand why people like King so much is the other movie I watched recently - or rewatched, to be more accurate, as I am pretty sure I have watched it more times than any other. Stand by Me is one of my personal favorite movies not because of the quality of the film but beacause I have watched it since childhood and the characters and plot are so endearing to me. Based on King's novella "The Body", it is not a horror story and that might have more to do with my taste than the worth of his various writings. Where I think I can understand the millions of King fans is that I like the movie despite its mediocracy. The story is good and the characters are pretty straightforward and a bit cliche, but because of that I can easily relate to them and digest what I am watching on screen without being caught up by having to think too much. It is a movie I can enjoy more so than respect and perhaps that is why Stephen King has become so famous and beloved as an author -- because his readers have the same reaction to his novels.

Refighting the Revolutionary War

TRAFFIC

THE OFFICE

Or the War of 1812. Or the Trent Affair.

As I have seen neither State of Play, the British TV miniseries nor the American film, I obviously don't have much to say about them. I will make a couple comments. First, I'll probably see the miniseries at some point (it probably won't be that soon, though, considering how long my Netflix queue is already), if for no other reason than what looks like an incredible cast: Bill Nighy, Kelly Macdonald, James McAvoy, Polly Walker. (Afraid I don't recognize David Morrissey or John Simm.)

Also, I can't say I share your feelings about Russell Crowe. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that you find him "irritating." I agree that a lot of his films—A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man, A Good Year—are too sentimental and, as you said, "earnest," but I guess I just avoid those ones for the most part and go to his less Oscar-baiting films—L.A. Confidential, Master and Commander, 3:10 to Yuma, American Gangster. I'm not saying he's my favorite actor and I have pictures of him all over my room or anything, I'm just curious why you don't like him much.

The main thing I wanted to talk about, though, as you may have been able to tell from this post's title, is looking at the different ways that the same material is approached in British and American productions. There are innumerable examples of this phenomenon, going back to the first American production of Shakespeare; for every positive example, there have been more than a few negative examples, like Life on Mars, The Ladykillers, or McG's abortive remake of Spaced. Rather than dwell on those, I'll take a look at a couple relative successes, Traffic and The Office.

I haven't seen Traffik, the five-episode 1989 British miniseries on which Soderbergh's 2000 film Traffic is based, but, based on your description of the two versions of State of Play, it sounds like something similar took place with this British-to-American adaptation as well. Don't get me wrong, I think Traffic was a good film, I just see it falling into the "Big Issues" problem you mentioned. (Of course, for all I know the British miniseries did too.) While it does a good job of showing the complexity and interconnectedness involved in the drug-trafficking and drug-control systems, it also depicts some elements—especially in the Michael Douglas parts—in overly straightforward, message- or dilemma-driven terms. Douglas's character comes to believe that drug addiction needs to be dealt with through understanding rather than crack-downs; Benicio del Toro's character discovers the extent of the corruption in the Mexican war on drugs; Don Cheadle's character gets his man in the end, despite the murders of his partner and the prosecution's chief witness. While it makes for some entertaining storytelling, it presents things so straightforwardly that, like what you said about the American State of Play, it doesn't leave you with a lot to think about (other than, maybe, "Did she do the right thing?" with regard to Catherine Zeta-Jones's character).

Turning to another British-to-American adaptation, the American version of The Office is obviously very different from the British original. (I say "obviously" because I assume you've seen it, Matt. If you haven't, drop what you're doing and rectify that immediately.) Despite its superficial similarities to the original—the setting, the main characters, the faux-reality-show documentarian style—it takes a much simpler, sitcom-y approach. The clearest example of this is the shows' respective bosses, David Brent (Ricky Gervais) and Michael Scott (Steve Carell). Michael Scott is dorky, clueless, and generally incompetent, but his heart's usually in the right place, and the American series often gives him opportunties to demonstrate this. David Brent, on the other hand, has virtually no redeeming qualities, is almost uniformly selfish and inconsiderate, and when he's fired at the end of the second series I had a hard time not thinking "good riddance" (even though he was the funniest character, and his departure meant the end of the show). (He only redeems himself, slightly, at the end of the Christmas special.) As with Traffic, I don't mean to sound like I dislike the American version, it's actually one of my favorite shows; it's just that while it's a great sitcom, the original's a work of sheer genius, largely because of the harder edge the latter is willing to take with its boss character.

I can't help but think that a great deal of the difference between British television and American television—as can be seen most clearly in examples of direct adaptation like The Office—is due to structural differences as well as creative ones. A great number of British TV series aren't what we would think of as series, but as miniseries with only a limited number of episodes. Whereas American shows are usually open-ended stories of often two dozen or so episodes per season, made with the expectation of renewal for addition seasons, British shows (or at least the one's I'm familiar with) are made one series (i.e., season) at a time without expectation of renewal. (Even when they do get another series, it isn't always immediately; for example, there was a year-long hiatus between the first series (1999) and the second series (2001) of Spaced.) And each series is much shorter as well—six-episode series for The Office, seven- for Spaced—requiring much greater concision and economy of storytelling. This ends up meaning that British shows tend to have a lot less unnecessary fat than their American counterparts. Given the amount of story, characterization, and humor in the British Office, it still amazes me that it was all done in only twelve episodes and the two-part Christmas special. So, in comparison to American television, British television (at least the examples I've seen) tends to be much leaner and more carefully structured, since they can't afford to waste a single episode.

But in the end, I think we can all agree that Russell Crowe is too old to play Ben Affleck's college roommate, and that Ben Affleck is too Ben-Affleck-y to play a member of Congress.

Play by Play

STATE OF PLAY. "STATE OF PLAY". With all this talk of Lost, I did get a bit distracted. I saw the movie from which this post arises (TRAILER) on my mom's birthday. Which is May 2.

I have a general policy of being, at best, cautious of anything staring Russell Crowe. It's not that he is an awful actor, it's just that, well, I find him irritating. And worse than that I find his choice of movies to be pretty pathetic and too often delve into earnestness, a trait that you might realize by now I despise in movies. In addition having been a reporter before, I know a bit about how things work and so am skeptical of movies about the profession, especially considering the corny scene from the trailer of Crowe's character bringing coffee to a detective and tricking him into giving information. I think that's probably an eye-roller for just about anyone, but it was cringe-worthy for me. But it was my mom's choice and, after all, it was cowritten by Tony Gilroy, whom I have written about as a pretty talented guy, and directed by Kevin Macdonald, who did The Last King of Scotland, which was an adequate movie, although honestly I appreciated it more for dramatizing the topic and giving an underappreciated Forest Whitaker the spotlight.

After writing most of this I realized I should do a quick, spoiler-free plot synopsis. Essentially in both stories the beautiful female aide to an up-and-coming politician dies under suspicious circumstances and a reporter, who has a history with the politician, investigates the story only to find it leads to a much larger web of political intrigue. Because it is a mystery, I probably should not say too much more.

The movie was OK and I would generally find it too unremarkeable to write about if it were not for the source material, a 2003 6-part British miniseries of the same name, and the opportunity to compare the UK and US approach to telling the same story -- which could be source of some fascinating conversation, I hope. So as not to have this go on forever, I am going to limit this post to be about this one individual case, but should you choose to respond, feel free to bring up others that might further explore the topic. I think you noted that you also were watching a British miniseries? Although I will admit I am less inclined to watch that movie treatment than this one so I don't blame you if you can't do the direct comparison.

The most telling contrast, for me, is the approach that the two take to showing the process of journalism. In the American version, Crowe's character (they kept the characters names so I'll generally stick to actors names for clarity) is proably 10 years or so older than the counterpart in the original and is presented as the grisly vetera who knows all the tricks of the trade. He drives around in his purposefuly beat up car and lives in a shabby apartment because, well, he's a reporter and that's what real reporters do! This despite the fact that he is a veteran reporter for a Washington Post stand-in and therefore would draw a rather healthy salary. His UK counterpart is played by John Simm as a bit of a smart-ass young gun who is in a bit over his head at times. In both treatments the main character seems to be unusually close to the editor of the paper, played by a steely Helen Mirren in the US version and a more caustic, and entertaining, Bill Nighy in the miniseries. Perhaps because I am familiar with an American-style newsroom, but I found the idea of Crowe just walking in and having chats with Mirren to be highly humorous. They do a good job on the set design of putting her separate from the rest of the newsroom, but where I've worked the editor is just as far from the newsgathering process. I would imagine it is the same at the Post and if I was the city editor there, I would be a bit pissed at being represented as a chubby guy whose only role in the development of a huge story is relaying messages from Crowe to Mirren. London newspapers are generally smaller and more controlled by the head editor so the relationship was not as odd to me, especially since Nighy is much tougher on Simm.

So am I picking nits because it's a topic in which I have some familiarity? Yes, probably so. But I think it does show the tendency of American film to frequently focus more on stars and out-of-this-world characters than our counterparts across the pond. We want people, not process. That's not always a bad thing and at times results in more personal stories instead of, at times, dull procedurals. But this is a story where the procedure is important. My biggest fault with the journalism in the movie is that all of these major forces come together in the space of a few days and, partly because Crowe is all-knowing, he is able to quickly find only the right information and in the space of a day he and his partner on the story, played by Rachel McAdams (more on this later), manage to go all over town collecting clues from various places in the space of a day against a ticking deadline clock. On the contrary the miniseries has plenty of blown deadlines that create an effective tension. Because it has much more time (6 hours instead of 2), it stretches the newsgathering over what I would guess are a couple of weeks and involves finding good information in bits and pieces followed by dead ends that later, once more clues come in, make more sense. There are lies and mistakes made and, at times, questionable professional and moral conduct. A story about figuring out a deeply political mystery involves a lot of procedure and although we do get to know the main characters well, what really shines is the depth of the story in this longer format. In addition to showing the lessened focus on character, it also says a lot to me about how the Brits consume their entertainment -- much more often in these series that run as long as needed to tell a story, as opposed to the US episode-centric television and action/suspense movies. It is quite fitting that a British miniseries would become an American movie.

Aside from the journalism, there is the subtext to the two pieces. Before watching the miniseries I read a piece in the NY Times (sorry, I can't find the article online) about the movie and the process of adapting it. It brought up the subject of class as a major part of the original so I will say that going into it I was looking for that. So the observation there is not completely my own. It is much more subdued than I was expecting and one has to be looking, I found, to see the references (although I would imagine a Londoner would find it much more obvious), but looking back it could be seen as a crux from which much of the true conflict revolves around. In the miniseries the reporter is an old employee (campaign manager) or the MP instead of an old college roommate to the senator in the American version (which, by the way, seems odd to me since Crowe looks A LOT older than Ben Affleck, who is not really worth writing much about). The film focuses more on the outside political influences invovled in the situation while the miniseries is more about the political process in general, which I found makes a bit more sense as the reveals begin to happen toward the end. The film also, in what appeared to be an attempt to be more contemporary, cast McAdams (whose does well if not admirable here) as the green blogger who, although smart, has a lot to learn from Crowe's old-school journalism. Aside from an overly simplistic (and outdated) representation of newspapers in a digital age, it also does a disservice by combining two characters -- the character with the same name as McAdams is played by Kelly Macdonald as more of an equal and her character brings up rather subtle issues of sexism, while the green character is a freelancer played by James McAvoy who seems to focus on generational issues and class again (he is the son of the editor). Overall there is a tension between the characters that doesn't seem to exist in the movie, which instead seems to want to have us look to topical issues of the problems in journalism and the military-industrial complex. We don't have class issues here to the extent of the Brits so it is not quite as easy to use as a backdrop, but despite being more focused on characters the movie revealed less and the interactions just did not work. It was as if they tried to bring over too much from the miniseries but tried to still tell it in an American way.

So what does this tell me? American films in general have a much more difficult time dealing with "big issues," mainly because it treats them as "Big Issues." The mniseries was not about the newspaper industry or the influence of the energy issues. It was about the power of the political system to corrupt and efforts of intrepid reporters to break into this system, something the main reporter had already failed to do once with the main politician -- who definitely does not view the reporter as an equal. The movie makes them old bros from college who had a fight but get back together to possibly solve the case and find the bad guys, all while journalism is changing because of the Web and new corporate owners (can't forget to have the Big Ideas). This makes the movie an OK piece of entertainment with some good turns that are not always predictable (athough for the most part, don't expect a lot of surprises) and seems to move along with a rather good rhythm. It's not bad filmmaking, it's just rather bland and did not make me think much at the end. The miniseris is a different beast and kept me wishing I had more time to watch another episode most nights and yet also contemplating what it all meant afterward -- even though I had seen it after the movie, which for the most part recycles the same main plot twists -- including as I write this several weeks later. I don't think those observations say something about every American film -- there are certainly many that are challenging -- but, in general, it says a lot about the difference between how the entertainment industry creates products for its audiences in the two countries.

People vs. Plot on "Lost"

LOST

Since we seem to be on the same page on a lot of aspects of Lost—Elizabeth Mitchell's hotness, for example—and speculating about the sixth season at this point doesn't seem especially fruitful—as usual, the fifth-season finale raised at least three new questions for every answer it provided—I'll spend most of this post addressing a particular issue, the balance between characterization and mythology in the show in general and in the fourth and fifth seasons in particular.

One of this show's greatest strengths has always been the attention given to its large cast of characters. Moreover, we were essentially told from the beginning that it would be a very character-driven show by the fact of the flashbacks, often dealing with matters little related to the events on the Island but nevertheless giving us better insight into what makes them tick. While there's always been a lot going on plot-wise, the show's rhythm has generally been such that there was time for new plot developments to sink in, for the characters to react to them and consider what it means for them. For example, Michael's two rafts in the first season weren't just plot devices for getting off the Island, but also opportunities for delving into Michael and Walt's relationship and exploring questions of the survivors' place on the Island.

I think that the fact that the fourth and fifth seasons were several episodes shorter than the first, second, and third couldn't help but negatively impact this. You said that the writers were at fault for this. (I presume you mean in how they wrote the show, not by going on strike.) It's true that greater economy of storytelling could've been made, to try to cover the same amount of story in less time. But it's also true that television is a zero-sum game to a great extent; they only have about forty minutes per episode, so spending more time with one thing will generally mean spending less time with something else. This is especially the case with Lost's format; since each episode focuses on a single character, exploring a character through flashbacks, etc., is typically a significant time commitment, and more so since the seasons became shorter and there were fewer episodes to go around.

Also, the switch from flashbacks to flashforwards—though terrific in most respects—has limited the show's opportunities to explore new characters like the freighter folk. If they'd still been doing flashbacks in the fourth and fifth seasons, they could easily have replaced flashbacks for characters we've already seen a lot of (seriously, I think we've seen enough of Jack's and Kate's backstories at this point) with flashbacks for the new characters. As it is, the flashforwards have given the show a lot of new and fresh material on the old characters to explore, but there's been that much less time for basic background information about Faraday or Charlotte (and we still don't know squat about Lapidus except that he was supposed to pilot Oceanic 815). Basically, the choice before the writers wasn't between info on one of the new characters and the umpteenth boring Jack flashback, it was between info on one of the new characters and an interesting Jack flashforward, which is a tough call to make. In this respect, the switch to flashforwards has been a bit of a double-edged sword, giving interesting new perspectives on established characters but leaving less opportunity for finding out about the newcomers.

Now, I agree that the depiction of some characters, particularly the freighter folk, has suffered; my point—I do have one, honest!—is that I don't really feel I can criticize the writers for this very much, since, as I wrote in my last Lost post, I think it's mostly due to factors outside their control, e.g. the shorter seasons, the story's broadening scope, and the switch from flashbacks to flashforwards. Regardless of who or what's to blame, or whether or not it was inevitable given the show's format and the course of the story, for the last couple seasons my reaction has been similar to the "detachment" you mentioned. Intellectually, it's just as fascinating, challenging, and confusing (in a good way) as ever, if not more so; emotionally, it hasn't clicked as consistently as the first three seasons. I wasn't sure whether this might have been due to how I watched the different seasons: I watched the first, second, and third seasons on DVD, and the fourth and fifth on TV. Watching those two seasons the last two years and not connecting with them emotionally quite as much as I did with the first three, I thought that perhaps watching the show only forty minutes per week (if we're lucky), instead of (as was often the case) hours at a stretch, hampered my ability to get as emotionally involved.

That may be a part of it, but I think it's more to do with characterization taking more of a backseat to plot, especially with the newer characters. A good example of this, which you mentioned, is Charlotte; when she died (fifth season, episode 5) all we'd seen of her were her doings on the Island and a brief flashback of her digging up polar bear fossils in Tunisia, and the only insight we had into her motivations was her claim to have been to the Island before. So when she died, it didn't register nearly as much as, say, the death of Eko, like her a secondary character who'd been on the show for a little more than a season (according to Lostpedia, Eko appeared in 21 episodes, Charlotte in 18); what emotions I did have during her death scene had more to do with Faraday than with her. I guess you could say the same about Shannon (whom I never really cared for) or Libby (whose backstory we never saw other than briefly showing up in other people's flashbacks), but in both of those cases their respective relationships with people I really did care about—Sayid and Hurley—had been given enough time for me to get more emotionally invested. Charlotte's "relationship" with Faraday, on the other hand, just consisted of his following her around and constantly asking her if she was OK.

So I agree that the fifth season succeeded in the end, but, except for certain character elements (first and foremost Sawyer and Juliet's Dharmaville romance), it succeeded due to its plot rather than its people. As I said above, one of the reasons I fell in love with Lost was its focus on realistic, interesting characters amidst all the strange plotlines, mysteries, and mythology. They've obviously got a lot of work to do plot-wise next season, but I really hope that they're able to make character development a central aspect of the show again.

To address some of your other points (and hopefully to inject a bit more controversy into what's kinda been a big agree-fest), I'm not as sure as you that Jacob and Loophole are a couple of puppet masters in control of everything we've been seeing on the show. It's not really that I have an alternative theory, but more that I just don't think we know nearly enough to say. Sure, they may seem all-knowing and all-powerful now, but this show's given us so many red herrings and false positives that I wouldn't be surprised if they end up being just as misguided or incompetent as most everyone else. After all, fearless-leader Jack's leadership was generally a failure, the Machiavellian Ben is just a needy patsy whom the Island used and abandoned, and Prophet of the Island Locke's life was just one manipulation and defeat after another until he was strangled on the floor of a cheap hotel room after Ben tricked him into telling him what he needed to know. While Jacob knew that several of the survivors would become important in one way or another (maybe), he also was tricked into letting Loophole into his Foot of Solitude and getting killed by one of his own followers (maybe).

One last thing. I'm curious as to what this "ongoing battle" between you and your co-worker about Ben is all about. What do you mean that he "will have his ends if not his means vindicated"? Do you mean "vindicated" practically (as in, he'll win) or morally (as in, he'll turn out truly to be one of the "good guys")?