Casting a Blockbuster

This was a group exercise to “produce” a movie. My input was to present ideas for the main cast based on the synopsis.

After an accident in the high school chemistry lab, a high school senior, Chip (Elijah Woods), discovers that he has gained the power of x-ray vision.  He tries to keep his new “sense” secret, but he is soon discovered by two identical twin cheerleaders (Lindsay Lohan) when he helps them find a lost family heirloom. 

The two young women begin competing for his attention.  At the same time the “evil” chemistry teacher, Mr. Fowler (James Woods) discovers Chip’s secret and tries to persuade him to use his new-found powers for financial gain. 

When Chip refuses, Fowler hires Brutus (Vin Diesel) to kidnap the twins and use them to force Chip to change his mind.  Chip turns to his parents - Gordon, a failed stand-up comic (Steve Martin) and Sylvia, a ditzy commercial jingle singer (Goldie Hawn), and his nerdy best friend, Reggie (Jason Biggs) for help.  Much hilarity ensues. 

Chip – Josh Hutcherson.

Josh Hutcherson is probably most known for playing Peeta in The Hunger Games. He is currently in his mid-20s, which makes him a little older than the character Chip, but his youthful face and short stature make him look younger. He has a slight build and could easily play a classic highschool aged ‘everyman’ who is not the popular jock but also not a hopeless nerd.

Reggie – Thomas Brodie-Sangster.

He is well known for a number of child-star roles including episodes of Dr. Who and the film Love Actually. As a young adult, he is famous for being the character Jojen Reed on Game of Thrones. He is very small and skinny and could easily play a bookish character. I picture this character as a serious nerd not a goofy nerd. Jason Biggs would be very awkward and clumsy. Thomas Brodie-Sangster would play a sharp and confident nerd who is just not interested in highschool social drama.

Twin Cheerleaders – Abigail Breslin

She became famous as the middle-school aged girl in Little Miss Sunshine. She is blonde and plays bubbly exuberant characters often. She would be ideal for the double-role of split screen twins in the tradition of The Patty Duke Show and The Parent Trap.

Mr. Fowler – Mark Sheppard

He is a highly prolific actor who has played a number of side characters in several TV shows including Battlestar Galactica and Supernatural. He is slightly shorter than average height and has a classic male pattern baldness hairstyle and a wide frame. He has a gruff voice and could easily play an intimidating school teacher drunk on power. His appearance makes him look much older than he actually and could play an older professor type.

Brutus – Kevin ‘Dot Com’ Brown

Dot Com is known for being a consistent side-character in the show 30 Rock. He plays one of the two buddies of Tracy Morgan on the show. He has an intimidating appearance as a bald Black man over six feet tall and certainly close to 300lbs. On the show he looks intimidating, but he is very gentle and kind in his demeanor. On occasion he chooses to act like a tough guy, and it is very effective, but also hilariously out of character. For this role, I believe he would fill a similar purpose. He could be shown to be harmless and good-hearted but forced to do this kidnapping because he owes Fowler a favour. The audience would enjoy seeing him trying to maintain a façade in front of the kidnapped twins.

Gordon – Jimmi Simpson

He rose to prominence playing the revolting Liam McPoyle on Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. He further demonstrated his acting ability on Westworld. He is a good age for the father role. He has a physicality that is similar to Josh Hutcherson. He is very good at playing sleazy losers, and I could see him as an overconfident failure of a comedian.

Sylvia – Alison Becker

She plays a reoccurring side character on Parks and Recreation. She plays a reporter for a small-town newspaper. Her character is not particularly ditsy or incapable, but she is very self-centered and uncompassionate. She is shown to have loose morals and very little loyalty to anyone. For this role, she is the right age and has a certain aging beauty about her. With some extra makeup and inappropriate clothing for her age she could portray a somewhat immature mother of the main character.

Movie Review - Moon

The film Moon is a fascinating movie which is widely acclaimed for a variety of reasons. For one, it was Duncan Jones’ first movie, and it was a huge success at Sundance the year it was released. It also achieved an incredible feat which was to produce quality sci-fi on an impressively small budget. This film was the talk of the town in the nerd-culture sphere in 2009, so I was quick to seek it out then. Upon re-watching it, I was struck by how sad and powerful some of Sam Rockwell’s scenes are. All in all, the movie completely holds up without question, apart from how the Kevin Spacey-bot forces us to ponder the ‘Me Too’ movement.

Moon is a story that is told with a very sparse cast. This probably contributed to its budget significantly. Sam Bell is a basic blue-collar worker. Sam Rockwell, the actor portraying the character, is a perfect version of a futuristic everyman. He is matter-of-fact and laid back in his attitude and habits.

GERTY is the name for the artificial intelligence robot who maintains the base along with Sam. This character unfolds as one of the more interesting inversions of audience expectations. It is impossible to ignore the comparison to the Kubrick classic, 2001, wherein HAL 9000 turns on his human counterparts. GERTY is surprisingly helpful and builds trust in the audience early. Viewers may find themselves constantly questioning GERTY’s loyalty.

Tess Bell is Sam’s wife on Earth. She is only ever seen in video-chat sessions. She and Sam have a young daughter who is in the video calls as well. Tess is supportive and loving and appreciative, and she clearly misses Sam up on the moon.

There is another character who is also played by Sam Rockwell. This character somehow looks just like Sam in every way, which causes some confusion and much plot development. This person comes into the story injured and confused and seems to be a clone of Sam, which causes both to start questioning everything.

Moon begins with a typical boring day for Sam. He drives a large lunar vehicle and farms the resources, which has become a mundane grind. His job is to maintain this lunar mining facility for a multi-year period which is two weeks from completion.

Sam’s normal activities are interrupted when he discovers a signal of a living person out in the fields of the mining operation. He goes out to discover it is an injured man who is brought back to the base. There he realized this man is actually a clone of himself.

This discovery causes him to question everything. The clone recuperates and the two fluctuate between friendship and animosity as they attempt to figure out a way forward. All through this drama is GERTY the AI who may or may not be trustworthy.

Sam often talks to himself, which makes his motivations clear. From the outset of act one, all he wants is to finish this job and get home to his family. He encounters the main conflict at the end of act one, when he first finds his clone and the hook is set.

Act two revolves around the conflict between the two Sams. As a viewer, one has to assume that they will kill each other somehow. This act ends when it is clear there is no real hope for Sam to satisfy his hopes of returning to his family by any normal method.

Act three is where everyone finally starts working together towards the common goal of somehow defeating the faceless company that put them in this position. Act three is full of spoilers about how the movie ends. It is enough to say that there is teamwork, a climax, and finally closure, which is satisfying, but also sad.

The film is overwhelmingly white and black in its colour palette. The moon has no atmosphere which means even the daylight seems like nighttime. There is a fundamental eeriness to the lunar environment. Duncan Jones also makes an effort to increase the solitude by showing over and over how vacant and empty everything is.
Moon is certainly labelled as a sci-fi film. It also could be accurately called a horror or thriller. The notion of encountering your own exact duplicate is a certain psychological horror cliché.

This film remains fantastically impactful, although I really don’t think I need to see it again. It shows the triumph of the human spirit in opposition to absolute existential tragedy. This is impressive, but wow is it sad. In the days when this movie was released, I feel it was well understood that sci-fi could be much better than it was but for the money limitations. Is all sci-fi condemned to being either super low budget TV or mega-budget Transformers 12? Duncan Jones rose to the challenge, but he didn’t write a space-adventure, he wrote a space-psycho-thriller.

Movie Review - District 9

Wikus Van De Merwe is our main character who occupies the vast majority of the scenes. He is a good-natured straight-laced kind of person who seems to thrive in a office management position. He has been working with a government branch in charge of outreach to the alien refugees. The nation has decided to relocate them to a new camp outside of the city, and Wikus is given the task of chief administrator of this action.

Sandra Van De Merwe, a beautiful young woman who seems happily married to Wikus. Her father is the head of some unnamed gigantic influential corporation. She seems to like Wikus very much and would like to live a happy normal life.

Wikus’s Father in-law is a powerful intimidating businessman. He seems to have great political influence as well. He is responsible for getting Wikus this new important position, which gives him great power over Wikus. He seems to have a low opinion of his son-in-law and may be actively trying to sabotage him. He is very protective of his daughter but does not divulge anything to her about what he does for a living.

Christopher the Prawn is mysterious. After seeing several scenes of the aliens behaving animalistic, we finally see one who has the ability to reason and speak with subtitles. His backstory is a mystery, but he seems to be very intelligent and is working towards a solution to the refugee crisis as a whole. He is collecting pieces of alien technology to build something that is not immediately understood. He is able to put his prejudice aside and trust Wikus when the crisis begins.

Christopher the Prawn’s Son is a curious and helpful little boy. He exhibits many of the traditional cuteness signifiers despite being largely cockroach-like in form. His very existence helps the viewer identify and humanize the weird and off-putting aliens. He helps to clarify the main Prawn’s motivations and priorities.

The movie begins as a documentary style fiction about an alien invasion turned refugee crisis. As the viewer is brought up to speed quickly, we meet our main characters from a camera’s point of view as if watching a reality T.V. program. The protagonist is a clear example of the Hollywood everyman who has worked hard to earn a decent job and a good wife. He is motivated to impress everyone in his life to do a great job with this new opportunity he is offered. The job is to lead the effort to relocate a ghetto of alien refugees, which is sure to be a P.R. nightmare to say the least. Wikus is eager to please, nonetheless.

Wikus’s task goes off the rails on the first day as his nerdy curiosity leads him to be exposed to something exotic and dangerous. This entangles our main character in a violent struggle between forces. Wikus has to rethink his old priorities and allegiances to move forward and act heroically. The movie is ten years old and it could have been made yesterday.

Broadly, the movie follows a traditional heroes’ journey. Wikus has a normal life and is exposed to something exotic which demands he undertake a task. He tries to deny the call to action, but it is inevitable, and he can never return home again. By the end of the movie he is a changed person and he winds up back where the whole mess began but his perspective is completely different. He sacrifices his own wellbeing to save someone else.

District 9 is unique among action sci-fi movies in that it takes place largely in broad daylight. The movie feels profoundly realistic due to its similarity to television news and reality programing. I recall the film was widely hailed for being innovative in several ways, and above all shockingly inexpensive. Before this film, it seems special effects artists were intimidated by the daylight and tended to use darkness to increase the drama but also the believability of their effects.

This film has a few scenes in darkened rooms, but they are mostly interiors during the daytime. This means there are loads of little holes where light leaks in, as well as intentional windows and shades. Having such dark interiors during the obvious daylight adds realism to the idea of poverty. The lack of light is due to the lack of electricity.

To enhance the feeling of actual documentaries, the film uses a great deal of first-person shots from the point of view of the camera itself. This is a clear reference to news footage primarily. It also carries an interesting connection to youtube.com and the era of smartphones everywhere, even though it predates the widespread adoption. “Shakey-Cam” had still been around for a good while before District 9, so it was also a ‘nod’ to other films like Saving Private Ryan and similarly brutal war movies. The entire first act unfolds as if shot from a single camera following the main character. He speaks directly to the camera as well as the camera operator as he goes through his tasks, which adds a strange immersion to the viewer. All of his super-optimistic actions are interspliced with documentary-style interviews clearly conducted after some ‘event’ that has yet to occur. Intercutting between the stable shots of interview subjects and the unstable shots of our main character adds a large amount of tension and anticipation.

The audio similarly follows the feeling of a reality-tv performance. Characters address the camera directly, and other action happens overtop of the primary action. Crashes happen offscreen and the camera pans over quickly to see what made the sound.

I have seen this movie one time before, and it was in 2009, the year the movie came out. I remember how it was highly praised by several tastemakers for its outside approach to action/sci-fi on a truly achievable budget. It also connected reality with sci-fi in a way never before seen, and it took place in a somewhat obscure location. It was certainly a movie of interest in 2009, so I was curious to see how it had aged.

My first take is that District 9 is extremely violent in a disturbingly realistic way. I think much of the sci-fi enthusiasts of the world who praise this film might be forgetting about the middle portion. The final sequence involves literal lightning weapons and a robot exoskeleton in an elaborate gunfight, so one could be forgiven for not remembering how act two is a literal nightmare. The man has his fingernails fall out.

Overall, the movie made me feel very uncomfortable in a variety of ways. There is a great deal of gore and blood and exploding people, but I think the most horrifying scene is the three-minute surprise party for Wikus.

This scene highlights how I feel about District 9. It features some of the most amazingly effective action sequences of the last 30 years, possibly further. It also has some anxiety-inducing nightmare-fuel that cannot be unseen. I think it makes an interesting gesture towards meaningful social commentary, but I see no solutions or redemptions. Wikus is an everyman who gets caught up in something awful and there is no way back. He was a good guy doing a thankless job and everyone in his life abandons him when things go bad. He acts heroically to help the aliens, but his story is ultimately unsatisfying. I suppose he began treating the aliens with a dismissive, inhuman manner, but he was never a malicious sadist about it. He probably actually thought they would be better off at the new location.

Movie Review - Citizen Kane

Allegedly the greatest movie of all time, Citizen Kane remains impactful despite its prominence in satirical popular culture. The film has a half dozen leading characters, but the plot is heavily focused on Kane himself, the tragic man who has everything but feels like he is missing something and is doomed to die unfulfilled.

The story unfolds after the death of the titular character. A newsreel is being made to help the public understand the odd tycoon’s life and the meaning of his final words. One investigator is sent to interview the people closest to the man, and it is through these conversations that Kane’s life story is told.

The reporter interviews his college friend Jedediah, his business partner Bernstein, and reads the memoires of Thatcher, Kane’s first trust fund manager. Many stories are recounted, and the character of the man is further understood, but the investigator Thompson never finds the truth behind Kane’s final words.

Charles Foster Kane is played by the famous Orson Welles. Welles also directed the film, and it is hard to ignore the dominance of his character. I was personally mesmerized by the young Welles, having recently seen the old Welles in a series of out-takes from his late-life commercial acting in which he is noticeably drunk. Orson Welles is a strange cross-generational influencer much like Kane himself. He was famously involved with the War of the Worlds radio broadcast which demonstrated the power of mass media. Kane gets involved in the newspaper business and reinvigorates the medium with his ideas. Kane winds up dead and alone in a giant mansion. Welles has to sell fish sticks to pay rent.

I have trouble seeing Kane or Welles as a tragic figure. Perhaps Kane was sad and nostalgic at the end, but he did lead a full life. It was amusing to think a political career might be completely ended when a love affair was exposed. Also, maybe Kane’s second wife should have become a Jazz or Folk singer instead of opera. I think the modern lesson of this movie is that Kane shouldn’t have given up so easily. Maybe his problem wasn’t a lack of love in his upbringing, but rather a core sense of shame over having not earned his wealth. He reinvents the newspaper business and amasses great wealth, but maybe it was all motivated by a need to justify his fortune. I should hope that nowadays a Kane-type figure would invest in some life-coaches and therapists that could offer some genuine perspective.

In order to appreciate the film, you have to re-adjust your perspective and try to see it as someone in the ‘40s might. From a technical standpoint, the brilliance is undeniable. This is an age when most movies looked as if they were stage plays. Citizen Kane has deliberately meaningful foreground and background elements with thoughtful lighting choices and clever scene changes. Sound effects are well arranged. If the viewer is familiar with bad audio and video effects, Citizen Kane stands as a profound success.

Having not seen this movie until now, I cannot help but be consumed by all the references and jokes made about Citizen Kane. I would wager that over half of the scenes have been parodied directly on The Simpsons. Combine this with the notion that it is the “greatest movie of all time”, it is difficult to take the film at face value without over-analyzing every moment. It stands as a historical curiosity for me. It is certainly interesting enough to recommend today, but only as a museum artifact.

The force awoke

See, was that so hard?

I just saw TFA today on January 1, 2016. I figure I should download my initial reaction given that it is fresh.

I saw it on an Imax screen, and I believe I am done with Imax screens for awhile. Unless you can sit directly behind the projector, I do not believe there is a good seat in the house, I was just to the left of the projector, and I found the whole experience distracting and unrewarding. I think technology has already created the perfect viewing experience, and it is the home theater where you have some measure of control over your experience. I look forward to re-watching this movie several times in this manner.

Clearly the first thing I am obliged to mention is that the movie is essentially perfect. It is pure, 99.9% perfection. I am certain that there are plot holes to be revealed, and performances or effects to nitpick in the future, but for the moment, it is clearly a winner. Star wars is not dead, and JJ Abrams did not kill it.

This is admirable, although I hesitate to praise Abrams all that much. A Star Wars movie carries with it so much weight and backstory that it really ought to be incredibly easy to write. The bar had been set so low by the prequels, that this really should not have been so hard to do. Although, of course, there was the prequel series. So clearly its an all-or-nothing game, but conditions could not be better.

The movie takes its rhythm from the original Star Wars: A New Hope, but shuffles the roles around a good bit.

I couldn't help but compare the two movies at every opportunity, especially the various characters' action figure potential. The original movie gave us about a dozen distinct characters with clearly identified names, and all were merchandised at an unprecedented level. There is some of that here, but there isn't much I can really say that hasn't been said already. Star Wars is a fucking Cash Cow for disney, and they know how to make a buck. Anyhow, The Force Awakens has a good bit of the action figure mentality going on, but its a part of Star Wars, so what can you do?

The first notable re-shuffling of the character roles from A New Hope was the division of Luke's role into two separate characters - Rey and Finn. Rey is the one stuck on a desert planet trying to make ends meet, while Finn is the frightened youth fleeing danger. Luke was both of these at once. Both Rey and Finn go through their own hero's journey, and their paths combine without resorting to romance.

• Rey is a tremendously well written character. There are a million other bloggers out there talking about female empowerment and role models, so I wont belabor the point. It is noteworthy to show how simple it can be to just make the character be a female in control of her own destiny. TFA even passed the Bechdel test by having Rey talk to the glasses lady alien about the force. That's two female characters talking to each other about something other than romance. Rey is clearly a warrior class.

• Finn is another great character and foil for Rey. I say that they are both new analogs for Luke, although Finn has a good bit of the Han Solo character as well. Han is, of course, in this movie as well, but he plays a slightly different role. Finn is very roguish and clever, although above all, cowardly and prone to run from danger. I couldn't help but imagine him as being a version of the traditional female protagonist. Rey is clearly proving that a female can be the alpha hero, Finn seems to be doing the opposite. He is proving not all men have to be aggressive and brutish to achieve their goals.

The second re-shuffling I saw was the 'wise old sage' archetype. In episode 4, this role is taken by Obi-Wan Kenobi. Luke goes to him for guidance, and it leads him to leaving Tatooine by help of the new ally, Han Solo.

• In The Force Awakens, Han Solo is the sage who guides the protagonists. Just like Kenobi, he ends up also being the sacrifice that ensures victory. I thought this was great, although it may be impossible to get beyond him being Harrison Ford. I look forward to watching the movie again in a more pleasant environment. I could not stop analyzing his every move to decide if I believed he was Han Solo. I think it was great, but I can't be sure. I have a lot to say about the use of the aging actors in this movie, but I'll save that for now.

The rest of the cast is virtually all direct analogs of characters from A New Hope. I am not faulting the movie for this - it was the right thing to do. This is what Lucas should have done in the prequel series.

• BB-8. Good lord. The ball droid is just a triumph of design, and a total kick in the nuts to George Lucas. Lucas knew he had to include some kind of comic relief character into his prequels, which led to Jar Jar. Lucas hit the jackpot with C3P0 and R2D2, and he didn't know where to go from there. He attempted to go further with the silliness and increase the complexity, when the answer was simpler and less complexity. There is a fair amount of humor to be found in all the characters, although for this to truly be a star wars movie, it must include some kind of comedy character throughout the movie, and the answer is BB8.

• Kilo Ren is a clear analog of Darth Vader. I hope that someday someone will remake the Anakin Skywalker story. The Clone Wars series nails the character, but that is unfortunately just one short period of his life. Darth Maul was Lucas's attempt at creating a Darth Vader analog for the prequels, but he failed in a number of ways. Ren is great. He is a classic example of a well written character - he has clear desires and motivations and he acts them out rather than just saying them.

• Chewbacca is still Chewbacca.

• Poe? I'm not sure what to say about him yet. He gets one early scene indicating his importance, and I was sure he was going to die a horrible death. He seemed like a character created to emphasize how young and inexperienced Finn is. Then he didn't die and came back in the final act. I guess he's sort of like Wedge from A New Hope. I believe Wedge had a much bigger part intended, because Luke knew him from back home as he mentions right before they all leave to blow up the Death Star. I can only assume Poe will have more to do in the later episodes. Again, Lucas should take note - this is how you write interesting side characters. Poe has very little screen time, but he manages to create a lot of intrigue.

• The Wizard of Oz is the new Emperor.

So, characters aside, the movie really mirrors A New Hope in many ways. R2D2 is entrusted with crucial information and escapes, finds a hero in a backwater town, and together they complete the quest. Here, BB8 meets Rey in on a rural dusty planet, and together they deliver the vital information. Luke made new allies and was drawn into the galactic struggle for peace while learning to use his newfound Jedi powers. Rey does essentially the same thing.

We even have wildly similar set pieces - the desert planet, the giant death ball, star destroyers, the actual millennium falcon, and even a snow level. JJ Abrams even gave us a swordfight and ships flying inside of something to blow it up.

All this repetition of the Star Wars format is reassuring and welcoming and fantastically well done. 

Now what else can I learn from this movie? It is fascinating to think how, in 1982, Return of the Jedi ended and fans began speculating about what might happen next. There were certainly novels and comic books and games all full of well written stories that expanded the lore of Star Wars, but these did not bear the Lucas brand of approval, and are therefore "non-canon". This means that, The Force Awakens finally expands on a story that has been brewing for 34 years. This movie has answered some questions and raised even more.

• Did the Empire just crumble when the emperor was killed?

In the original Return of the Jedi, the movie ends with the celebration on Endor. The later remastered version included shots from other planets cheering at the killing of the emperor, including the capitol planet of Coruscant, where people can be seen tearing down a statue of the emperor. Is Leia now the president or something?

I guess not. The prequels taught us that the Emperor seized power over a democratic republic. He used his Sith power to coerce planet governments and organize a separatist movement of non-republic planets. The separatists raised an army so the republic raised an army, both being secretly manipulated by the emperor. The war led to financial crisis in the Republic, and the Emperor was elected as temporary prime minister of war or something. He allowed the war to progress and solidified his power. His final move was to use a secret protocol to command the clone army to turn on the Jedi knights and kill them all. He indoctrinated Anakin to the Dark Side, and the two of them eliminated all other living Jedi. Anakin gets turned into Darth Vader and placed in charge of the clone army. The separatists are quickly defeated, and Emperor Palpatine is credited with the success, and becomes the new galactic dictator.

So then there is the inevitable unrest, and later outright rebellion against the empire, and about 25 years after seizing power, the emperor is finally killed. It is plausible that the empire would just go back to being a republic as it was in the prequels and before. It is also plausible that there was still loads of soldiers and weapons and generals to command all elsewhere in the empire. Surely some other powerful general might rise up.

It seems that the Empire still exists in some form. They are still led by a Sith Lord. There is still plenty of Nazi imagery.