Monday, March 08, 2010

82nd Annual Academy Awards, Oh My God What Have I Been Doing for Three and a Half Hours



Well, the only thing surprising about this year's Oscars was how unfunny the hosts were. Hollywood pays enough money for this fiasco, you'd think they could afford some not-awkward.

Also it contained the most inappropriate interpretive dance number in the history of inappropriate dance numbers.

Also wtf sandra bullock.

Thursday, March 04, 2010

Positive Female Role Models in Science Fiction, Part II

A while back I started a series of Positive Female Role Models in Science Fiction, a series which peaked at one because do you know how hard it is to find positive female role models in science fiction? Whether they're warrior women or sexy scientists or space-damsels in space-distress, women routinely get shafted in this male-fantasy dominated genre.



This next one has been so obvious to me (and everyone else) that I thought it not even worth mentioning. Of course Donna Noble is a positive female role model. Anyone who's watched the Doctor pine after the chavtastic Billie Piper while Catherine Tate gets stuff done knows that of all Doctor Who companions ever, Donna Noble is the only one who managed to be an equal.

And I do mean ever. It's been nigh fifty years of transparent kidnap fodder or two-dimensional window characters or feisty cave girls. Sarah Jane Smith might've sassed Tom Baker's Doctor more than he sassed back but she was still mostly along for the ride. And Leela and Ace were both warrior-woman phenotypes and more protégés than companions.



But along comes Donna Noble with her hang-ups and insecurities and above all that attitude. Is she bovvered? She ain't bovvered. In a show where the main function of the companion is to stand there listening while the Doctor explains stuff, Donna will more than likely walk away mid-speech because that's not what she's here for.



Of course, Donna's story arc is about as sad as television can get. Which means the writers are either complete chauvanists or sad, sad realists.

Award Season Ramp-up Round-up: Down to the Wire!



There is a particular joy in the art direction of Fantastic Mr. Fox, where the scenery and all the action is flattened into two dimensional planes, the background sttretched up and out like a renaissance landscape. Unlike in a traditional animation (or god forbid cgi) the subjects on screen are real, tangible, three-dimensional objects: puppets, lovingly matted and choppy, walking about in colorful, detailed sets so meticulous you can almost smell the rubber cement. Yet these detailed, 3d objects are smooshed into two-dimensional planes and the effect is like having your head stuck in a diorama, or a toybox, where everything's it's own little fascinating anthill. Like in some of the fantastic 2D platformer games that have come out in the last few years you get the sense that although this is a stylized reality nothing has been lost in the stylization. A reduction that enhances. At no point does it feel like a cartoon and at no point does it feel like a movie. It's its own world, which is what an animation should be.

Which isn't to say Mr. Fox is all that great. It's near-impossible to judge Wes Anderson movies as movies, mostly because they refuse to be taken as such. They're kind of like a disaffected Gen X'er on the other side of the room at a party. Interesting, talkative, defensive, flawed but he'd never call them flaws, petulant but (he says) always justifiably so. And above all he never approaches you — you're either interested or you aren't.

Sometimes it works. I was taken in by The Life Aquatic for its unabashed childishness, it was so loudly and uncompromisingly a labor of love, a big, expensive non-commercial romp in the toybox of aging adolescants. (The 2d-flattening effect was also used to great effect here — suddenly the submarine becomes a great big toy, of Bill Murray's yes but mostly Wes Anderson's, and we get to play around in it with him.) Other times he's less convincing. I thought The Darjeeling Limited, for example, failed to gel around anything other than its leading men's self-fascination.

So we know We Anderson movies have certain plot points and certain characters, and there's only one lesson anyone ever learns (the only lesson one really can learn by himself alone in a sandbox, "I'm a little crazy, yes, but I can't help it.") Mr. Fox hits these points no better than any other Anderson movie, so in terms of that it's pretty mediocre. But there's still some fun to be had watching a creator plays with his creations, especially when those creations get away from him as they often do, here probably more than in any other of his films.

The dialogue of course is sparkling and the cast a screenwriter's wet dream. But if you were expecting Anderson to grow up anytime soon, well, no cussing way.