This guy, huh? Like many people who have heard of Nicolas Refn, my first exposure to his films was his 2011 film Drive, which took me a while to see but I really liked it. Not necessarily for its story but for most part the visuals were really wonderful to look at at most parts and the soundtrack really fit the mood and tone said visuals were trying to set up. It was also easy to see when I played the game Hotline Miami when some people called it a video game version of Drive at least in some regards, and that wording might not have actually existed but it is a comparison that does work. Yet even though I really enjoyed the movie, I didn't have much of a desire to look up the rest of his work for a while.
At least until I heard about what a train wreck of a film his followup Only God Forgives was, which I caught a trailer of it once and like Drive, it had really cool visuals and had Ryan Gosling in it. Yet, from what I've heard the cinematography might have been the only good thing about the movie itself. After a while, I convinced myself to watch the movie just to see if the criticism that it was getting was justified. Here is where my experiences with watching a Nicolas Refn film start going into the territory of "what the fuck am I watching?" It is rather hard for me to summarize the plot of the movie without having to go to another source not necessarily because I didn't understand what was going on, but if I had to put it in words, it was more just not having a moment where everything clicks and things start making sense. The early stages of the film start off this way where this guy named Billy kills a under-aged prostitute and is caught by the cops. The Lieutenant (and maybe the main character of the movie itself) Chang lets the father of the girl beat up Billy, which gets too out of hand and Billy ends up being killed. Right after this, Chang cuts the father's arm off and I didn't understand why at first because when I first watched it I thought it was for killing Billy yet Chang was the one who let this happen. Looking up a synopsis made the scene make more sense yet not by much. I could go on for quite a while after this where the film just kind of go bonkers with the plotting where there is a plot where Gosling's character, Julian, is asked by his mother to track down his brothers killer yet there is a lot of times where things happen yet nothing happens at the same time. And for the most part, I get the criticisms of the movie, and I agree that the cinematography is wonderful along with just the visuals being the way they are (after learning that Refn suffers from mild color blindness, the way colors work in his films make a lot of sense).
A while later, I managed to watch Bronson (the oldest film of his that I have seen, in case you're wondering), though this was more of a curio on Tom Hardy since the only movies I had really watched that had him in it were Warrior and The Dark Knight Rises, which made me really interested in what other work he had done. It wasn't until I finished watching the movie that I put two and two together and realized that Refn was the one in the director's chair for this one as well, which took me longer than it should have as the first scene in the movie, where Bronson is on a stage talking to an audience to serve as some sort of stopgap in between moments of his life. This is another movie where not much of the plot made sense to me, which might have been partially due to my lack of knowledge in the subject matter and the amount of gaps in time that pass. I am unsure myself as to whether or not I really liked the movie or not, which is another sign that I have watched a Nicolas Refn film since out of the four I've seen, the only one that I have some sort of clear consensus on is Drive. As for this one, I found it rather intriguing at moments and thought that the character of Charlie Bronson was one that I was fascinated by which did add another interest point towards Tom Hardy as an actor.
Here is the most recent addition to his movies that I have watched and the one that made me want to do this post, Valhalla Rising. Another movie that I was interested in watching it mainly because of the actor in the lead, this time being Mads Mikkelsen. Now talk about someone who I really wish I had seen in other movies sooner, as my introduction to Mikkelsen was from the show Hannibal which made me see how fantastic he was and almost immediately had to see the other work he has done. This was one of them along with The Hunt (which I haven't seen yet) as well as realizing that he had actually worked with Refn before, such as in the first two films of his Pusher trilogy and Bleeder. What made me really want to watch Valhalla Rising was that the lead was an entirely silent character, which is something I haven't seen too often personally so I started watching it and the obvious came where the visuals of the film got me almost instantly and then the plot started coming into play and I'm trying to piece together what was going on. For those who aren't familiar, the film is about this mute prisoner named One Eye who escapes from his captors only to join a bunch of Christian crusaders who end up travelling to the Americas. The plot actually sounded cool, especially since I do have a soft spot for the Norse type of things, and for the most part I could get behind it. The weird thing though was that One Eye is apparently psychic since throughout the film, he has visions of the future which is partially how he was able to escape in the first place and he always follows his visions blindly. He also somehow communicates with this boy who was part of the community that held him prisoner despite the fact he doesn't speak, which is really given no explanation which I am unsure as to whether or not this hurts the film or not.
So, deciding if I like Nicolas Winding Refn as a director or not is one of those things that might end up perplexing me for years since the most obvious thing I like about him is his cinematography and visual style, while the rest kind of is a mixed bag. I also get his style due to his connection to Alejandro Jodorowsky, one of those guys whose movies I haven't seen aside from a few clips yet they do seem like glorious eye candy. For the most part, I'll try and catch some of his earlier work, mainly trying for Pusher so I can see his humble beginnings and looking forward to what he comes out with in the future. And hopefully, something in my brain clicks so I can enjoy the movie without being confused by it again.
Tuesday, September 2, 2014
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
The Adaptation Complaints #2: Let's Talk About Red Dragon
Stupid name for the blog cause I thought that having a question as the title was getting too old and it would seem like I was never going to answer the questions I was asking anyways, so slap together a dumb title that kind of goes into the concept behind the original and we've got something that's the same thing. But at least I can add subtitles to the posts so I could think of specifically what I want to talk about. With the adaptations post today, the idea came to me to talk about the Thomas Harris novel Red Dragon and its adaptations after watching it's first appearance to the big screen as the 1986 Michael Mann film, Manhunter. This is a movie I really do like, since it's two leads are almost cast perfectly, with William Petersen as Will Graham and Tom Noonan as Francis Dollarhyde, AKA "The Tooth Fairy," and the whole tone of the movie is really dark and grimy, especially when Will is trying to get into the mindset of the man he is trying to capture, almost making it seem as if he is just barely on the right side of the line separating him from becoming just like the people he chases after. This was also the introduction of the character of Hannibal Lecter to the film scene, being played in this movie by Brian Cox. Unlike his appearances in other movies, mainly the films that feature Anthony Hopkins in the role, his role in the movie is kept rather short, only appearing in three scenes total yet he manages to make a solid impression on the audience.
I'll get into more depth later with Manhunter later, as I compare it to the remake of the film in 2002 which does bear the original title of the book unlike its predecessor. Now, with the title difference, there is an explanation to it which is kind of stupid as is was because the producer of the '86 film, Dino De Laurentiis, changed the title after one of his films from the year before, Year of the Dragon, bombed, although it was also said that it was due to the amount of kung fu movies that featured the word dragon in their title. Ridiculous, I know, but let's go into the remake. The second film was directed by Brett Ratner and was mainly put into production due to the success the two previous films in the series, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, that it would be good to capitalize on the audience and Anthony Hopkins still being able to play Lecter one more time. It is hard to say whether this version follows the book more closely, as I have not read it, but putting the films back to back, aside from the visual differences, parts of the story also appear to change from one to the other.
In Red Dragon, the role of Will Graham is now played by Edward Norton, who for the most part does a good enough job despite sometimes seeming as if he is kind of a little too aloof, barely showing any signs of inner turmoil from the requirements of his job and having to communicate with Lecter again, who had almost killed him a few years prior after he managed to figure out he was the Chesapeake Ripper. But this does give away one of the more baffling inclusions in the "remake": the beginning of the movie which follows how Graham was able to apprehend him. Now for the most part, this story was alluded to in spoken work in the original movie and from research this might have the case in the book as well, but there was a much larger difference from the source in this version. That being that Hannibal had been working with the FBI and Will for quite a while on the same case where he is the culprit. In the book and the original movie, it was stated that the moment where Graham caught Lecter and nearly got killed in the process was the first time they met, having found a random book that had highlighted a specific page which featured wounds that were similar to the victims of the case. Part of the reason why that scene doesn't work is that seeing it on screen makes it look rather silly, along with the fact that it doesn't really make much sense for Hannibal to be involved with the FBI and somehow not being able to hide the evidence that ended up leading to his capture, or maybe it's worse for Graham that he didn't notice beforehand.
But that is kind of one of the things that doesn't work in the '02 film, and yet for the most part, it is a solid movie that does do some things better than it's predecessor. While the leads in the remake, mainly Norton since I do think Ralph Fiennes as Dollarhyde does a really good job in his role while only being held back by his overexposure this time, are not as good in this movie, the side characters do work a lot better. This can mostly be attributed to two characters who are fleshed out this time around, the aforementioned Hannibal Lecter (although this could be due to Hopkins having done the role twice already and it was easy to get the character this time) and Reba McClaine, the blind woman that Francis falls in love with during the events of the story. In the original, Joan Allen played Reba and while I do see some advantage to her lack of an appearance in the original film as it does make the scene where Dollarhyde catches her with a co-worker and mistakes it for her being unfaithful to him interesting in his sense as it does fit into the character that he doesn't have that much luck in relationships and they haven't been together long, so misreading that scenario and going on the final killing spree because of it works, the character was very underused anyway and her character really suffers because of it. Emily Watson, who is one of those actresses I really enjoy in movies, is given a lot more to work with, as Red Dragon fleshes out her relationship with Francis a lot more which does make her final scenes work, as their love for each other does seem genuine and the end result of Francis' (spoilers but I kind of assume that people who are reading this have seen the movies already on this post) fake suicide does allow us to sympathize with the two of them, although is it a good thing to sympathize with a serial killer too much?
Now for the most part, I do think that both films are worth watching and they do take the source material in their own directions, both showing the good and bad in how that is done. And while I do like Manhunter slightly more, there are some things that it does wrong, such as the the climax of the movie feeling rushed. I do not really know why it was done that way, as I wouldn't have minded another 10-15 minutes that did have the book's climax, like Red Dragon did. Now what I'm talking about is that in the end of Manhunter, Will and the rest of the FBi have managed to find Francis' home and then manage to kill him before he can kill Reba. Now for Red Dragon, it does continue after the fake suicide where Francis goes after Will and his family, which is more closer to the book, and as a climax works a lot better.
But now it's time to focus on anther way that Red Dragon has technically been adapted onto the screen: taking some of the back story of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter and turning that into the series Hannibal. The show itself is somewhat of a re-imagining of the source material, as it does rewrite some of the situations and such, taking place before the events of Red Dragon yet is also taken into a more modern setting and also taking a cue from the opening of the second film. It was brought into development by Bryan Fuller, a showrunner whose series, while being critical darlings or cult hits, rarely ever got past more than two seasons such as Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies. As for myself, I have only watched the first season of the show so far, yet from the first minute or so of it, I was instantly hooked. The acting among the leads does the best thing I could imagine, especially Mads Mikkelsen's portrayal of Lecter; and the description he gave for what he was trying to do with the character makes sense when watching it and in a way, makes it something that fits him perfectly. He wanted Lecter to be seen similar to Satan, someone who enjoyed watching humanity and the way it works yet feels alien and detached. The rest of the lead cast does a great job, with Hugh Dancy doing a great interpretation of Will, having him be more of a neurotic and showing how much of a toll the work he's doing is taking on his psyche, which I guess is more of an expansion of Petersen's take on the role. As for the story itself, it is easy to tell from the first few episodes on that the show was more or less going to go into its own direction with the source material, since many people already know what the destination is, and for the most part I really want to see where it goes from here. I also caught a few allusions and references to the source material yes I can imagine that there are many more I have yet to catch. One I liked a lot was when Lecter asks Will about the aftershave he uses, remarking how it smells as if the label on the bottle was a ship, with Will saying that it was a Christmas present.
I am unsure how much more in depth I can get into this as my knowledge in the subject is not as great as many others who have talked about it before me and will in the future, so I guess this is where I shall leave my two bits of discussion with for the time being. Maybe I'll do a retrospective on Mads Mikkelsen since Hannibal was the first time I really saw him in anything and he did such a wonderful job that I really want to see some of his other work. So until then, hopefully I can get more work done on this blog in the near future.
I'll get into more depth later with Manhunter later, as I compare it to the remake of the film in 2002 which does bear the original title of the book unlike its predecessor. Now, with the title difference, there is an explanation to it which is kind of stupid as is was because the producer of the '86 film, Dino De Laurentiis, changed the title after one of his films from the year before, Year of the Dragon, bombed, although it was also said that it was due to the amount of kung fu movies that featured the word dragon in their title. Ridiculous, I know, but let's go into the remake. The second film was directed by Brett Ratner and was mainly put into production due to the success the two previous films in the series, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, that it would be good to capitalize on the audience and Anthony Hopkins still being able to play Lecter one more time. It is hard to say whether this version follows the book more closely, as I have not read it, but putting the films back to back, aside from the visual differences, parts of the story also appear to change from one to the other.
In Red Dragon, the role of Will Graham is now played by Edward Norton, who for the most part does a good enough job despite sometimes seeming as if he is kind of a little too aloof, barely showing any signs of inner turmoil from the requirements of his job and having to communicate with Lecter again, who had almost killed him a few years prior after he managed to figure out he was the Chesapeake Ripper. But this does give away one of the more baffling inclusions in the "remake": the beginning of the movie which follows how Graham was able to apprehend him. Now for the most part, this story was alluded to in spoken work in the original movie and from research this might have the case in the book as well, but there was a much larger difference from the source in this version. That being that Hannibal had been working with the FBI and Will for quite a while on the same case where he is the culprit. In the book and the original movie, it was stated that the moment where Graham caught Lecter and nearly got killed in the process was the first time they met, having found a random book that had highlighted a specific page which featured wounds that were similar to the victims of the case. Part of the reason why that scene doesn't work is that seeing it on screen makes it look rather silly, along with the fact that it doesn't really make much sense for Hannibal to be involved with the FBI and somehow not being able to hide the evidence that ended up leading to his capture, or maybe it's worse for Graham that he didn't notice beforehand.
But that is kind of one of the things that doesn't work in the '02 film, and yet for the most part, it is a solid movie that does do some things better than it's predecessor. While the leads in the remake, mainly Norton since I do think Ralph Fiennes as Dollarhyde does a really good job in his role while only being held back by his overexposure this time, are not as good in this movie, the side characters do work a lot better. This can mostly be attributed to two characters who are fleshed out this time around, the aforementioned Hannibal Lecter (although this could be due to Hopkins having done the role twice already and it was easy to get the character this time) and Reba McClaine, the blind woman that Francis falls in love with during the events of the story. In the original, Joan Allen played Reba and while I do see some advantage to her lack of an appearance in the original film as it does make the scene where Dollarhyde catches her with a co-worker and mistakes it for her being unfaithful to him interesting in his sense as it does fit into the character that he doesn't have that much luck in relationships and they haven't been together long, so misreading that scenario and going on the final killing spree because of it works, the character was very underused anyway and her character really suffers because of it. Emily Watson, who is one of those actresses I really enjoy in movies, is given a lot more to work with, as Red Dragon fleshes out her relationship with Francis a lot more which does make her final scenes work, as their love for each other does seem genuine and the end result of Francis' (spoilers but I kind of assume that people who are reading this have seen the movies already on this post) fake suicide does allow us to sympathize with the two of them, although is it a good thing to sympathize with a serial killer too much?
Now for the most part, I do think that both films are worth watching and they do take the source material in their own directions, both showing the good and bad in how that is done. And while I do like Manhunter slightly more, there are some things that it does wrong, such as the the climax of the movie feeling rushed. I do not really know why it was done that way, as I wouldn't have minded another 10-15 minutes that did have the book's climax, like Red Dragon did. Now what I'm talking about is that in the end of Manhunter, Will and the rest of the FBi have managed to find Francis' home and then manage to kill him before he can kill Reba. Now for Red Dragon, it does continue after the fake suicide where Francis goes after Will and his family, which is more closer to the book, and as a climax works a lot better.
But now it's time to focus on anther way that Red Dragon has technically been adapted onto the screen: taking some of the back story of Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter and turning that into the series Hannibal. The show itself is somewhat of a re-imagining of the source material, as it does rewrite some of the situations and such, taking place before the events of Red Dragon yet is also taken into a more modern setting and also taking a cue from the opening of the second film. It was brought into development by Bryan Fuller, a showrunner whose series, while being critical darlings or cult hits, rarely ever got past more than two seasons such as Dead Like Me and Pushing Daisies. As for myself, I have only watched the first season of the show so far, yet from the first minute or so of it, I was instantly hooked. The acting among the leads does the best thing I could imagine, especially Mads Mikkelsen's portrayal of Lecter; and the description he gave for what he was trying to do with the character makes sense when watching it and in a way, makes it something that fits him perfectly. He wanted Lecter to be seen similar to Satan, someone who enjoyed watching humanity and the way it works yet feels alien and detached. The rest of the lead cast does a great job, with Hugh Dancy doing a great interpretation of Will, having him be more of a neurotic and showing how much of a toll the work he's doing is taking on his psyche, which I guess is more of an expansion of Petersen's take on the role. As for the story itself, it is easy to tell from the first few episodes on that the show was more or less going to go into its own direction with the source material, since many people already know what the destination is, and for the most part I really want to see where it goes from here. I also caught a few allusions and references to the source material yes I can imagine that there are many more I have yet to catch. One I liked a lot was when Lecter asks Will about the aftershave he uses, remarking how it smells as if the label on the bottle was a ship, with Will saying that it was a Christmas present.
I am unsure how much more in depth I can get into this as my knowledge in the subject is not as great as many others who have talked about it before me and will in the future, so I guess this is where I shall leave my two bits of discussion with for the time being. Maybe I'll do a retrospective on Mads Mikkelsen since Hannibal was the first time I really saw him in anything and he did such a wonderful job that I really want to see some of his other work. So until then, hopefully I can get more work done on this blog in the near future.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Like What You Like.... Just Don't Try And Think You're Superior
This topic came to my mind when I was at work and I was thinking about a movie trio that I'd rather watch than a single episode of any reality show, the first thing I could think of being a movie marathon of A Serbian Film, Salo, and Men Behind The Sun. I'm sure I could come up with a lot more disturbing trio of movies that go together nicely (maybe I'd put Gross Out in there) but all it meant was that I would rather watch some of the worst movies that are only meant to gross out and disturb people beyond comprehension before I watch a reality show willingly. I was also trying to make a joke about it as Penn Jillette was one of the people in the show I was really complaining about (Celebrity Wife Swap...... just why?) and one of the quotes he made in the beginning of the show was that he only lets his kids do things that are intellectually stimulating and my quip was that "And when they misbehave, we do stuff like being on Celebrity Wife Swap. Works better than any other form of punishment," I also came up with a ridiculous idea of a found footage parody influenced by the John Travolta film Phenomenon but that's for another time. Yet I kept thinking about the topic about my disdain for reality shows for quite a long time, even during my blood donation but at least it subsided until I got home after and finally gave the Nostalgia Critic's Top 11 Trailers video. I enjoyed his list, and his reasoning behind his choices was well thought out, yet I was kind of pissed off on how he mentioned watchmojo.com and it's top 10 trailers list, as I do not really like the site all that much, since their lists usually contain the usual suspects and the reasoning behind the choice seemed really half-assed at times, even when the picks are some I agree with mainly due to the reasons and their placement on the list.
So back to the Nostalgia Critic, since I was watching the video on YouTube, I read some of the comments and saw that someone mentioned that watchmojo put Gravity Falls in the top 10 most hated Disney cartoons, which is perhaps one of the most surprising things I had heard and I thought it was a joke until I actually watch the video and saw that it was on there (at number 7, which did kind of diminish the blow but still). It was so pissed off at this choice that I didn't bother finishing the video because I don't understand why Gravity Falls is even a choice in that, as in my opinion and probably many others, it is easily one of the best kid's shows that is on television now and maybe the best Disney animated show. This also was an example of half assed reasoning as well, since they only gave a sentence to explain what they thought was wrong with it and those were that the show was dark, stereotypical, and inappropriate for kids. Now I can understand why people can dislike the show, as it probably isn't for everyone but that reasoning is perhaps one of the worst reasons for hating something I have heard in quite a while. A easy contraction I could make for the argument of that the show is too dark is paraphrasing Don Bluth, as part of his philosophy with his movies was it doesn't matter how dark a story is; if it has a happy ending, kids will be able to take it. And since I'm sure a lot of people have seen at least one of his movies, mainly the ones in the '80s like Secret of NIMH and Land Before Time, they could attest to that Bluth was kind of correct in his assumptions, although it could also depend on the maturity level of the children and how they are able to process some of the more dark moments.
Now here comes part of the my topic and why I am kind of a hypocrite in regards to this, and even though I dislike most of the opinions on the site and there are other people's opinions I disagree with (the whole reality show argument this started with), I can't really force someone not to like a show they want to watch no matter how much I dislike it myself. Some goes with movies and the like, as there are always going to be people that are in the minority regarding opinions, such as when someone says they really did not enjoy the movie that got all of this praise and accolades and vice versa. The easiest example I could give is my enjoyment of Friday the 13th Part 5, as a lot of people do see the movie as being one of the worst in the franchise, yet I enjoy it. Although not really so much for the horror aspect of it, as more of the fact that the movie is really unintentionally hilarious, where is plays kind of like the least self aware parody of itself, almost the opposite of Part 6 which in itself is rather self aware and makes fun of itself on many occasions. Part 5 is almost the equivalent of The Room in where it's humor comes from, yet it never reaches that Tommy Wiseau level of incompetence, yet how many movies actually do? If I had to pick some of the more hilarious moments from the movie, it has to come from the hick mother and son combo of Ethel and Junior and those performances are kind of something else, where it almost feels like they were meant to be in a comedy or something.
Yet before I forget about it, part of the issue with the system of Watch Mojo I have a problem with is that a lot of the top 10 content looks user generated, and the lists come from user suggestions, which while it does at least mean that some of the more lesser known things could get mentioned, the way it works doesn't always make it that way, as those kinds of suggestions could always be made towards the end of the voting process, meaning that they never had a chance to go against the mainstream picks. And yet, it also does show how the majority thinks for the time which I guess is fine and if the top 10 lists feel as if they are perfect choice, then I can disagree all I want but also know that my opinion isn't the same as everyone else's. It feels as if I never really talked all that much about the headline of this post, but to be honest it should really be a given. Part of the problem is that we often just expose ourselves to things that we know we'll like and sometimes, just act all snobby about it whenever we are introduced to something out of our comfort zone and hate it almost immediately without giving it a chance. Expectations also play a big part in it as well, as we can hold things in such high regard that it is difficult to watch something without holding it to that standard as well. Now some movies seem to just pander to a specific audience and those are the movies and shows that are kind of hard to pinpoint as to why one may like or dislike it, yet others are much easier such as mainstream blockbusters for example. I can respect one's opinion regarding their dislike for a movie or show I love if the reasons behind that disdain seem legitimate as it makes it easier to understand how someone's own views on genres compared to your own. So I guess all I can say is that have your own opinion and just follow your own thoughts and not anyone else's just because it is the mainstream thing, but also take in those other opinions to see not only how they differ but also try and tune your own so that you can understand your own views better.
So back to the Nostalgia Critic, since I was watching the video on YouTube, I read some of the comments and saw that someone mentioned that watchmojo put Gravity Falls in the top 10 most hated Disney cartoons, which is perhaps one of the most surprising things I had heard and I thought it was a joke until I actually watch the video and saw that it was on there (at number 7, which did kind of diminish the blow but still). It was so pissed off at this choice that I didn't bother finishing the video because I don't understand why Gravity Falls is even a choice in that, as in my opinion and probably many others, it is easily one of the best kid's shows that is on television now and maybe the best Disney animated show. This also was an example of half assed reasoning as well, since they only gave a sentence to explain what they thought was wrong with it and those were that the show was dark, stereotypical, and inappropriate for kids. Now I can understand why people can dislike the show, as it probably isn't for everyone but that reasoning is perhaps one of the worst reasons for hating something I have heard in quite a while. A easy contraction I could make for the argument of that the show is too dark is paraphrasing Don Bluth, as part of his philosophy with his movies was it doesn't matter how dark a story is; if it has a happy ending, kids will be able to take it. And since I'm sure a lot of people have seen at least one of his movies, mainly the ones in the '80s like Secret of NIMH and Land Before Time, they could attest to that Bluth was kind of correct in his assumptions, although it could also depend on the maturity level of the children and how they are able to process some of the more dark moments.
Now here comes part of the my topic and why I am kind of a hypocrite in regards to this, and even though I dislike most of the opinions on the site and there are other people's opinions I disagree with (the whole reality show argument this started with), I can't really force someone not to like a show they want to watch no matter how much I dislike it myself. Some goes with movies and the like, as there are always going to be people that are in the minority regarding opinions, such as when someone says they really did not enjoy the movie that got all of this praise and accolades and vice versa. The easiest example I could give is my enjoyment of Friday the 13th Part 5, as a lot of people do see the movie as being one of the worst in the franchise, yet I enjoy it. Although not really so much for the horror aspect of it, as more of the fact that the movie is really unintentionally hilarious, where is plays kind of like the least self aware parody of itself, almost the opposite of Part 6 which in itself is rather self aware and makes fun of itself on many occasions. Part 5 is almost the equivalent of The Room in where it's humor comes from, yet it never reaches that Tommy Wiseau level of incompetence, yet how many movies actually do? If I had to pick some of the more hilarious moments from the movie, it has to come from the hick mother and son combo of Ethel and Junior and those performances are kind of something else, where it almost feels like they were meant to be in a comedy or something.
Yet before I forget about it, part of the issue with the system of Watch Mojo I have a problem with is that a lot of the top 10 content looks user generated, and the lists come from user suggestions, which while it does at least mean that some of the more lesser known things could get mentioned, the way it works doesn't always make it that way, as those kinds of suggestions could always be made towards the end of the voting process, meaning that they never had a chance to go against the mainstream picks. And yet, it also does show how the majority thinks for the time which I guess is fine and if the top 10 lists feel as if they are perfect choice, then I can disagree all I want but also know that my opinion isn't the same as everyone else's. It feels as if I never really talked all that much about the headline of this post, but to be honest it should really be a given. Part of the problem is that we often just expose ourselves to things that we know we'll like and sometimes, just act all snobby about it whenever we are introduced to something out of our comfort zone and hate it almost immediately without giving it a chance. Expectations also play a big part in it as well, as we can hold things in such high regard that it is difficult to watch something without holding it to that standard as well. Now some movies seem to just pander to a specific audience and those are the movies and shows that are kind of hard to pinpoint as to why one may like or dislike it, yet others are much easier such as mainstream blockbusters for example. I can respect one's opinion regarding their dislike for a movie or show I love if the reasons behind that disdain seem legitimate as it makes it easier to understand how someone's own views on genres compared to your own. So I guess all I can say is that have your own opinion and just follow your own thoughts and not anyone else's just because it is the mainstream thing, but also take in those other opinions to see not only how they differ but also try and tune your own so that you can understand your own views better.
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Is There A Right Way To Do An Adaptation? #1
Last Thursday, Game Informer began their new Super Replay on Resident Evil, yet there was a twist to this one: They were doing not only the 1996 PS1 version but also the 2002 Gamecube remake. It was a good introduction for me on all of the differences in both games, as the remake is a completely different monster from the original game. There is this sense that when they were working on it, the people behind it knew that it couldn't be the same game, so they took the mansion, added a bunch of rooms, rearranged puzzles and situations, and making it not feel like the same thing that the general public already played six years prior. This is maybe what I consider the right way to do a remake, executed to near perfection that should be the standard for remakes in any medium. Yet why am I talking about a remake of a video game when the main discussion of this piece is on adapting things into movies and such? Well, a remake could be considered an adaptation in the sense that it is taking a previous work and turning it into something different, so maybe it does fit.
That was not the only inspiration for making this post a thing, as during this past weekend, I bought two movies due to Barnes and Nobles' Criterion sale, those being the 1981 Brian De Palma flick Blow Out and the 1991 David Cronenberg film Naked Lunch, the latter being the other reason behind this. I am not familiar myself with the 1959 book of the same name by William S. Burroughs, but from what I could tell from the little research that I did, this is really only half of the story that the movie was trying to tell. Others have tried to adapt the book with no success, even Burroughs himself, that it would make sense that there would be assumptions that a direct adaptation would be incredibly difficult, let alone impossible, and Cronenberg kind of proved that point yet he was still able to make a movie out of it, by taking the contents of the book and combining it with the events in Burroughs' real life during the time he started writing the book, making the work into something more metatextual. Now, after the first time watching the movie, I don't really have much of a grasp on what the themes of the movie really are, although I guess there could be influence on the writing process, as William said himself that the accidental death of his wife Joan was the main reason why he started writing to begin with and this is how it works in the movie, yet to him it's just writing reports.
The thought into this coincides with the idea behind the Resident Evil remake, on that the best way to adapt a previous work could be to not go 100% straight and just try to make the work into something different that you call your own creation and not just putting someone else's ideas into another medium. This leads me to talk about the adaptations of a writer whose work probably has more movies made about it in the past 30+ years than almost any other: Stephen King. Starting with the 1976 film, Carrie, there always appears to be a new adaptation of one of his works coming out every year or so, either as a film on the big screen, made-for-TV movie, or even a show (regular or mini series), to the point where some of them are even getting remade themselves in recent years. The first one I could talk about is the third of his works to be adapted (after the aforementioned Carrie and the TV movie Salem's Lot) is the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film The Shining. This was a movie that King himself hated when he initially saw it, being disappointed in how some of the themes of the book and the supernatural elements were taken out in favor of making something different. The easiest way to attribute the lack of the supernatural was due to Kubrick's own skepticism regarding the subject, with that leading to how the force that was turning Jack Torrance into a monster was not partially caused by the evil in the Overlook using his weaknesses to gain control of him, but more due to just Jack suffering from the isolation and thus bringing out the true self within him, the part of him that was always there. Now, we could compare this to the 1997 TV adaptation that King had a direct involvement in the creation of the miniseries, and it becomes apparent easily that it was going to be a more direct adaptation of the source material more than the Kubrick film was. And so all of the themes that he wanted to get at are there in full force, yet it feels like there was something wrong with the execution. Some of the supernatural elements are too much into focus, and there was also the large amount of CGI effects which look incredibly dated, making a lot of the scenes that were supposed to be scary and such more hilarious than anything.
While I could go on with King adaptations (and maybe go into some of my favorites another time), that might take up a huge chunk of the post and even has with just that part about The Shining, I might focus on an adaptation this time that not only diverted slightly from the source material while also having the writer behind the book directly involved, and it's also one that I probably have the most knowledge of in this discussion so far. That movie being The Princess Bride. The book that the movie was based on was written in 1973 by William Goldman and it was a rather interesting read after having watched the movie many times before, as there is some sort of framing device yet they are completely different. When the book begins, it revolves around a fictional version of the author reminiscing about the S. Morgenstern book and wanting to introduce it to his son as he hopes that he would fall in love with it as he did as a kid. Unfortunately, his son doesn't like it and the fictional Goldman sees why, as when he was told this story by his grandfather, he had heard a very abridged version of the story (a comparison I could make here is in the episode of Black Books when Bernard and Manny try writing a children's book and the first draft Bernard writes is thousands of pages long) and the rest of that framing device begins to focus on his attempt at reducing a lot of the material down into something more easily digestible, even throwing in a few fourth wall breaking moments into the story as well, mostly as he says things regarding what he cut out and some of his personal memories of the book.
Of course there are differences from the source material to the movie although there are not as many but those that were are due to just an inability to put the images to the screen, such as the Zoo of Death, which was Prince Humperdink's own personal hunting grounds with the bottom floor being reserved for the most dangerous game: man. That man being Westley. It also goes into more depth into the story behind Inigo Montoya and his quest for revenge, along with Fezzik's origins, and the former is something I really wish had been in the movie. Also the ending is more open ended, and has another fourth wall moment where he writes that he assumes that the four of them got away fine. I'm going to assume that people have seen the movie version of The Princess Bride and kind of skip really getting into it but it is always good to hear that the writer of a book is the main screenwriter of the movie, because it means that it could turn out better since there is a first hand experience with the material. It also doesn't hurt much that Goldman himself was a two time Academy Award winner for his screenplays as well has having adapted some of his own written work before, such as Marathon Man and Magic. I also could go into his involvement with Stephen King works as he worked on Misery, Dolores Claiborne, and Dreamcatcher, or even more I might just focus an entire post or two on the work of William Goldman, but that is probably for another day. As for now, I'll try and continue this topic another time when I find some more interesting adaptations I could talk about.
While I could go on with King adaptations (and maybe go into some of my favorites another time), that might take up a huge chunk of the post and even has with just that part about The Shining, I might focus on an adaptation this time that not only diverted slightly from the source material while also having the writer behind the book directly involved, and it's also one that I probably have the most knowledge of in this discussion so far. That movie being The Princess Bride. The book that the movie was based on was written in 1973 by William Goldman and it was a rather interesting read after having watched the movie many times before, as there is some sort of framing device yet they are completely different. When the book begins, it revolves around a fictional version of the author reminiscing about the S. Morgenstern book and wanting to introduce it to his son as he hopes that he would fall in love with it as he did as a kid. Unfortunately, his son doesn't like it and the fictional Goldman sees why, as when he was told this story by his grandfather, he had heard a very abridged version of the story (a comparison I could make here is in the episode of Black Books when Bernard and Manny try writing a children's book and the first draft Bernard writes is thousands of pages long) and the rest of that framing device begins to focus on his attempt at reducing a lot of the material down into something more easily digestible, even throwing in a few fourth wall breaking moments into the story as well, mostly as he says things regarding what he cut out and some of his personal memories of the book.
Of course there are differences from the source material to the movie although there are not as many but those that were are due to just an inability to put the images to the screen, such as the Zoo of Death, which was Prince Humperdink's own personal hunting grounds with the bottom floor being reserved for the most dangerous game: man. That man being Westley. It also goes into more depth into the story behind Inigo Montoya and his quest for revenge, along with Fezzik's origins, and the former is something I really wish had been in the movie. Also the ending is more open ended, and has another fourth wall moment where he writes that he assumes that the four of them got away fine. I'm going to assume that people have seen the movie version of The Princess Bride and kind of skip really getting into it but it is always good to hear that the writer of a book is the main screenwriter of the movie, because it means that it could turn out better since there is a first hand experience with the material. It also doesn't hurt much that Goldman himself was a two time Academy Award winner for his screenplays as well has having adapted some of his own written work before, such as Marathon Man and Magic. I also could go into his involvement with Stephen King works as he worked on Misery, Dolores Claiborne, and Dreamcatcher, or even more I might just focus an entire post or two on the work of William Goldman, but that is probably for another day. As for now, I'll try and continue this topic another time when I find some more interesting adaptations I could talk about.
Saturday, July 19, 2014
The Depths of Pretension #2: Eyes Without A Face
Now here is a movie that I got introduced to just by the cover of it. And really, it is a pretty wonderful cover that kind of is the movie in a nutshell as it is the masked face of Christiane Genessier, who is the main driving force of what happens throughout the film itself, actions done by her father in order to make her life better. Eyes Without A Face also kind of got me intrigued as I was looking up the film in the Criterion site and was reading an article where Edgar Wright listed off his top 10 films in the collection and this movie was listed as number four. The way he talked about it was rather funny, as he was introduced to the film by his father who would tell his that the movie was the greatest horror film he ever saw, yet could not remember the name of the movie, which Wright himself would not be able to find out until many years later. The article itself is a fun read (http://www.criterion.com/explore/161-edgar-wright-s-top-10 if you are interested in it) and provided a great insight into one of my favorite directors and some of the movies he listed I'll probably cover very soon in a future article, those probably being Blow Out and Rushmore.
Now, getting back to the movie itself, the 1960 French film Eyes Without A Face is the story about a father who tries his hardest to fix his daughter's disfigured face caused by a car accident some time before. And his solution is to kidnap and kill young women, using their facial tissue in skin grafts for the treatment. Now in this light, the movie might be construed as a generic slasher film that shouldn't even be touching the likes of the Criterion Collection (which does have some baffling selections, like Armageddon) but really, the horror is underplayed, since as a whole there are only a handful of victims in the film, as in really only four, one of which had already died prior to the opening credits. A good portion of it focuses on the doctor's obsession with getting the procedure done right, having failed numerous times before as well as Christiane's disillusionment regarding getting a new face due to not only how the skin gets acquired but also because the grafts reject the new host (the scenes where they show the photos of the skin graft over time failing is one that I really could not praise enough with how well it works in ways I really cannot explain).
There are also a few moments in the film that do kind of get into the life Christiane had before the accident, where we are introduced to her former fiance Jacques during her fake funeral, going into how her father had her hidden since then and that the body they had buried was the victim from the beginning of the movie. The plot thread only comes in a few times where she calls him twice, only saying his name on the second call before hanging up. This does come into play towards the end but not really all that much. There is also the character of Louise, Dr Genessier's assistant in all of this, who mostly does it due to her feeling of owing him as she had gone through a similar process that Christiane is going through in that she was disfigured herself, which the doctor fixed aside from a few scars that are covered with a pearl choker. It is hard to say what the character of Louise stands for in the movie as she is in a situation that really does not seem like would really require her attention, and one wonders why she feels the need to aid the doctor in the killing and disposing of women, yet she does a good enough job at being a surrogate mother for Christiane which in of itself is good, as she often tries to give her support to keep going through with the skin grafts despite all the failures. The situation with Louise is one that I could also see being mirrored by Christiane if she was ever able to get a successful skin graft, as how she is technically dead and the only people who know she is alive are the doctor and his assistant, so she could probably get a new identity and live a somewhat normal life, as normal as having been isolated from the world for quite some time as well as having been part of a few kidnappings and murders can be.
One of the things that did kind of surprise me about this movie was that it was based on a book with the same name, which unfortunately I do not have that much information on at the moment, and that the tone of the book is rather different mainly due to the director having to try and get the censor boards off his back. Some of the things that did get removed were the amount of gore, which in the film is very minimal aside from a few scenes, the torture of animals which is implied in the film and the focus being more on the doctor in the book. The whole thing with the doctor was that due to German censors was for some reason upset with mad scientist characters (are a lot of stereotypical mad scientists German?) and putting more of a focus on Christiane would make the doctor more of a sympathetic character. And it does work to an extent, as it shows that despite all of the terrible things he does, it is out of the love for his daughter. Although, it has also left him blind to her growing apathy and disgust towards the whole thing and whether or not the procedure will ever work for her.
It is rather hard to rank this movie among it's peers at the time as I have not seen that many movies like this that were around then. The most generic comparison would be to compare it to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, which is kind of a easy one especially since the writing team of this movie did write the novelization of Vertigo. I also have a very little vocabulary when it comes to French film making as this is kind of my introduction to it and the only other movies that I have seen that have been French have been Blue is the Warmest Color and The Vanishing, which probably are not in the same category as Eyes Without A Face. Yet, I have to say that it has gotten me interested in it and has me hoping that I can find myself engrossed in those as I was in this film, as it is kind of a strange type of film, as it is kind of horror, suspense, and all that and yet none of those things. And there is always that eeriness of having someone whose face is covered in a white, expressionless mask and no clue is left as to what is underneath it.
Now, getting back to the movie itself, the 1960 French film Eyes Without A Face is the story about a father who tries his hardest to fix his daughter's disfigured face caused by a car accident some time before. And his solution is to kidnap and kill young women, using their facial tissue in skin grafts for the treatment. Now in this light, the movie might be construed as a generic slasher film that shouldn't even be touching the likes of the Criterion Collection (which does have some baffling selections, like Armageddon) but really, the horror is underplayed, since as a whole there are only a handful of victims in the film, as in really only four, one of which had already died prior to the opening credits. A good portion of it focuses on the doctor's obsession with getting the procedure done right, having failed numerous times before as well as Christiane's disillusionment regarding getting a new face due to not only how the skin gets acquired but also because the grafts reject the new host (the scenes where they show the photos of the skin graft over time failing is one that I really could not praise enough with how well it works in ways I really cannot explain).
There are also a few moments in the film that do kind of get into the life Christiane had before the accident, where we are introduced to her former fiance Jacques during her fake funeral, going into how her father had her hidden since then and that the body they had buried was the victim from the beginning of the movie. The plot thread only comes in a few times where she calls him twice, only saying his name on the second call before hanging up. This does come into play towards the end but not really all that much. There is also the character of Louise, Dr Genessier's assistant in all of this, who mostly does it due to her feeling of owing him as she had gone through a similar process that Christiane is going through in that she was disfigured herself, which the doctor fixed aside from a few scars that are covered with a pearl choker. It is hard to say what the character of Louise stands for in the movie as she is in a situation that really does not seem like would really require her attention, and one wonders why she feels the need to aid the doctor in the killing and disposing of women, yet she does a good enough job at being a surrogate mother for Christiane which in of itself is good, as she often tries to give her support to keep going through with the skin grafts despite all the failures. The situation with Louise is one that I could also see being mirrored by Christiane if she was ever able to get a successful skin graft, as how she is technically dead and the only people who know she is alive are the doctor and his assistant, so she could probably get a new identity and live a somewhat normal life, as normal as having been isolated from the world for quite some time as well as having been part of a few kidnappings and murders can be.
One of the things that did kind of surprise me about this movie was that it was based on a book with the same name, which unfortunately I do not have that much information on at the moment, and that the tone of the book is rather different mainly due to the director having to try and get the censor boards off his back. Some of the things that did get removed were the amount of gore, which in the film is very minimal aside from a few scenes, the torture of animals which is implied in the film and the focus being more on the doctor in the book. The whole thing with the doctor was that due to German censors was for some reason upset with mad scientist characters (are a lot of stereotypical mad scientists German?) and putting more of a focus on Christiane would make the doctor more of a sympathetic character. And it does work to an extent, as it shows that despite all of the terrible things he does, it is out of the love for his daughter. Although, it has also left him blind to her growing apathy and disgust towards the whole thing and whether or not the procedure will ever work for her.
It is rather hard to rank this movie among it's peers at the time as I have not seen that many movies like this that were around then. The most generic comparison would be to compare it to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, which is kind of a easy one especially since the writing team of this movie did write the novelization of Vertigo. I also have a very little vocabulary when it comes to French film making as this is kind of my introduction to it and the only other movies that I have seen that have been French have been Blue is the Warmest Color and The Vanishing, which probably are not in the same category as Eyes Without A Face. Yet, I have to say that it has gotten me interested in it and has me hoping that I can find myself engrossed in those as I was in this film, as it is kind of a strange type of film, as it is kind of horror, suspense, and all that and yet none of those things. And there is always that eeriness of having someone whose face is covered in a white, expressionless mask and no clue is left as to what is underneath it.
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