#but hollywoods war on creativity isn't anything new

[world-cinema-research]

Week 2 Blog Post by Grant Montoya

À bout de soufflé (Breathless) 1960

Breathless is a critically acclaimed New-Wave French film that was released in 1960. The impact it had on the filmmaking world was monumental; its many hallmarks include experimental cinematography methods, abrasive humor, stylized visuals, and the introduction of jump-cuts to name a few. It influenced the way Hollywood would produce movies in the coming decade. Roger Ebert is even credited with stating that “Modern movies begin here, with Jean-Luc Godard's "Breathless" in 1960.” 

Jean-Luc Godard was the director of the film who received substantial help in post-production from another director by the name of Jean-Pierre Melville. The movie had an estimated budget of $90,000 and had earnings of about $590,112. The movie didn’t have a big launch, but soon after people recognized its brilliance. Despite this being the first feature film of Godard’s career, the focus was to make something different. The 400 Blows (1959) directed by François Truffaut came out a year before Godard’s. These two films are usually regarded as the “best” of the French New Wave era.

As mentioned, film buffs' favorite critic Roger Ebert has made it known that this is one of the most important movies of all time. continuing his quote from earlier:

"It is dutifully repeated that Godard's technique of "jump cuts" is the great breakthrough, but startling as they were, they were actually an afterthought, and what is most revolutionary about the movie is its headlong pacing, its cool detachment, its dismissal of authority, and the way its narcissistic young heroes are obsessed with themselves and oblivious to the larger society." - Roger Ebert

Although I have only viewed the film once, I wholeheartedly agree with his words here. I may be wrong, but I feel that the movie could be considered slightly postmodernist because it recognizes itself by means of self-referentiality and relativism. I think this is what Ebert was hinting at here.

At the time of this film's production, France was enduring an economic recession from the devastating effects of World War II. According to freelance writer Ted Mills,

"Although there wasn’t a lot of money floating around, there was still enough to make short films[...]The film was shot on a handheld camera, by Raoul Cotard, who had used such a camera in the war for newsreels[...]Godard turned his brain inside-out, like emptying a bag across a table: all his cultural obsessions, not just in cinema, but in writers, philosophers, music, and more, all came out." - Ted Mills

It seems like this turbulent time was beneficial for Godard. Perhaps the ordeal of the war invigorated him, or the lack of funds available gave him an excuse to truly unleash his artistic spirit because nothing was really at stake.

Trying to put this film in place as conventional or unconventional is a difficult task. It could be considered unconventional in its production, for sure. $90,000 isn't much of a budget at all for that time period and the actors weren't too well known before the making.

On the other hand, many of the creative choices might be too much for a general audience to digest. Within the first 5 minutes of the film, there is some crass, self-spoken humor from Belmondo's character which makes one think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

"Little girls hitchhiking!

I'll charge a kiss per mile.

The short one's not bad. Nice thighs.

Yeah, but the other one...

Oh, hell, they're both dogs."

Our protagonist here lacks inhibition throughout the entire movie. It is hard to understand his goals, aspirations, or motives. There is hardly anything for the audience to latch onto besides the doom that awaits him. Very against the grain.

Quote #1

Michel Poiccard : "Why won't you sleep with me?"

Patricia Franchini: "Because I'm trying to find out what it is that I like about you."

These two lines of dialogue from our two main characters aren't anything extraordinary, but because of their simplicity, we are reminded of the motives between these two and their dynamic for most of the movie. Michel is portrayed as a crook who lives in the now; a hedonist who doesn't understand what it means to love. Meanwhile, Patricia is entertained by this swooner but can't seem to understand what Michel's true intentions are or what kind of a man he is.

Quote #2

Michel Poiccard: "If you don't like the sea... or the mountains... or the big city... then get stuffed!"

I could have chosen any one of Michel's many quips for the spot of this quote. Aside from the hit and run on the policeman at the beginning of the film, Michel's commentary is really what keeps the movie chugging along. It's blunt, funny, and very surprising to see in a film as old as this one.

Image #1 depicts Jean Seberg's character (Patricia Franchini) gazing into the camera, and this shot appears many times throughout the movie. I think this full-face capture is great directing because it burns the actor/character's features into your mind and it offers an intimate way for the audience to connect with the characters. Apparently, this was a time when Godard and other filmmakers focused on the craft of raw cinematography, more so than the pieces of what makes a movie emotionally captivating (plot, dialogue, scores, etc.)

Image #2 is taken from the apartment scene, a part of the movie that drags on for about 24 minutes where Michel rambles on and Patricia continues prying. This is perhaps the most creative choice the director made in this movie, and it sort of works for it. The still reflects the playful nature of two people who hardly know each other, and stresses the fact that these two aren't fornicating in a setting where it would seem inevitable.

[littlewalken]

May 4

Happy Star Wars to all those who Star Wars.

You never quite get a grasp on how much you've written until 264 pages are coming out of the copier. Nor how much the per sheet price adds up to until it's coming out of the copier. Or how far you'll drive to the other office store because it's $20 cheaper.

I had to print out a new hard copy of the Hollywood story. Can't say how old the last one was but judging by the stress on the 3 ring holes it's been awhile. Alos needed a new print out of the theme park story because that had enough of a rewrite that it somehow got shorter. I think I tightened it up, which is a good thing.

With the Hollywood story any future mark ups will be done with colored mechanical pencil. I need to add where there are hard breaks, I have no idea how to do chapters, softer breaks, put notes on the side of what is generally happening, note where making an idea a side story could be a good idea.

Page numbers can be in pen but if the others are pencil they can be erased if they become unneeded.

It still hasn't found a beta reader who understands the assignment of discussing with me how to improve it.

And not in a the word cemetery is mentioned once because this is historical fiction taking place in a real location that maps exist of and that is a landmark they pass one time, you will never ever read anything I write again way.

Yeah, guess who has a life long history of not believing people will do what they say.

By the way, one of the apartment complexes we told to get lost for their "one time fee" scam is willing to discuss what all the fees mean because obviously we don't understand them. No, we understand what scams look like, and it's fucking stupid there's only one elevator per building in a complex that size, imagine trying to move in with a couch, and other small things. It'll be a good fall back complex if they don't charge us half a month's rent just to apply.

This isn't the best place but it's still a place and just because it's too small for the smothering unit to hoard like the last place at least it's a place.

Did do a drawing in the little mechanical pencil book so that was good. Going to be home this weekend, we're close to the fairgrounds and it's mess, unless we're looking at a place, so I have a few days to try and be creative.

[ocw-archive]

Owen's Double Life (2003)

Owen Wilson has made a name for himself on screen with no-brainer slapstick and action roles. But off-screen there's a closet intellectual hard at work.

By John Millar Hollywood really can't abide cleverness, despite all those suits, publicists, and personal managers who love to throw around the word 'genius'. In fact - over intelligence is often punished. Think of the career of Orson Welles. Which is why highbrows in LaLa Land invariable adopt camouflage. Warren Beatty, for instance, paraded as a traditional stud before coming out as the thoughtful writer/director/producer of Reds and Bullworth. Woody Allen played the fool and kept his burning desire to be the next Ingmar Bergman to himself. Even Kevin Spacey isn't keen to exploit his learning. A mass medium demands the common touch. You have to play the game.

Which brings us to Owen Wilson and a suite at the Dorchester Hotel. The 34-year-old actor has flown into town to promote Shanghai Knights, the sequel to the hit slapstick western Shanghai Noon, in which he shared top billing with Jackie Chan as a sort of cowboy surfer dud.

Not that Wilson needs to be incongruous to stand out. Laid-back. laky and easy on the eye, Wilson never quite blend into the background. He steals scenes without trying - as Ben Stiller discovered in both meet The Parents and Zoolander - and yet he v=never seems to be quite all there while he's doing it. Films such as Knights and Noon, Meet The Parents and I Spy present the public face of a hot new star - a face with a broken nose, reputed to drive teenage girls wild. Those girls like to read about their wild boy getting jiggy with it at strip clubs with his actor brother Luke Wilson but don't much care about - or fro- their pin-up's other side: the closet intellectual who co-wrote the cult classic Rushmore with his old college chum, the director Wes Anderson, topping that quirky triumph with the Oscar-nominated The Royal Tenenbaums. The pair have been working together since their edgy indie short, Bottle Rocket, exploded at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival, and you have to wonder how the famously fastidious Anderson might view some of his creative partner's less creative choices. I mean, what's a guy who quotes Rimbaud doing in The Haunting?

'I know Wes likes Shanghai Noon and Shanghai Knights,' Wilson says in his soft lugubrious drawl. A shrug greets he suggestion that hi might be using the action flicks and commercial comedies to finance more personal work. "People talk about how these films that I've done with Jackie Chan are different from teh films with Wes but I think that in important ways there are similarities,' How so? 'I know that Jackie's character has a sense of innocence and that his comedy isn't mean-spirited or cruel. I would say this is also true in the Tenenbaums and Rushmore.' Anything else he has in common with the high kicking hero? Wilson tugs his long blond locks back with both hands. 'Well, Jackie describes himself as being a shy individual who has to be taken out of his shell, and, yeah, we shat=re that.' Indeed. Ask Wilson about his well-publicized romance with singer Sheryl Crow and there's the merest flash of trademark cocky grin before he - apologetically and charmingly - clams up. As a reigning Lotherio, he wants to maintain his mystery for the next supermodel and he's obviously learned from the media roasting his Romeo brother Luke endured dating Gwyneth Paltrow. 'Look, you're talking to someone who can't even watch himself on screen. I just get very critical and can't judge what I'm doing objectively.' Which is awfully sensitive for a man who impersonated a fighter pilot trapped in a war zone in Behind Enemy Lines.

He won't volunteer much information about his past either, thought that past explains his essential dichotomy. Father Robert Wilson was a sensible advertising executive, while mother Laura was a very artistic photographer. Owen and his siblings Luke and Andrew (also an actor) have managed to merge the best traits of both, but for a time the middle son's adolescence was troubled. When he was expelled from elite Dallas school St Mark's Academy - for cheating in a geometry exam - Owen's distraught parents packed him off to a military academy in Roswell, New Mexico - where he didn't feel alien but fitted right in. Not on the marching found however, but editing the literary magazine.

Writing got Wilson back on track. Stardom wasn't his dream - he never meant to be a rival to his brothers. That's why he penned parts for Luke in Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. Wilson insists that he and Luke aren't considered for the same roles - usually. 'We are different in the stuff that we do. We are different looking.' The family remains tight. Luke and Owen share a Santa Monica home. 'And my dad's with me,' Wilson offers, nodding towards the door. 'We're seeing the sights.'

He doesn't mean showbiz destinations. He hasn't done the Ivy or Home House. 'I'm a bit Winston Churchill fan. I went to his bunker and the War Room and heard the tapes of the addresses he made during WWII. No, I don't know why I have this thing abut Churchill, but I did manage to sneak a portrait of him in behind the headmaster in Rushmore.'

Don't expect a sequel to that offbeat masterpiece any time soon. Despite I Spy underperforming, Wilson's next project is a remake of the Seventies cop show Starsky & Hutch. He'll be Hutch and Ben Stiller - a friend since they met on The Cable Guy - will be Starsky. Wilson says he's heard the show's original star, David Soul, is irritated by the news. 'He says Ben and me are OK, but let's face it, we are no really Starsky & Hutch. Starsky & Hutch ate him and Paul Michael Glaser. Hopefully he'll come around to the idea.'

Owen Wilson politely manages to keep a straight face. Terribly useful when you're brighter than most and playing the game.

[gta-5-cheats]

Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Isn't Amazon's Answer to Black Mirror, It's Something Else

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Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Isn't Amazon's Answer to Black Mirror, It's Something Else

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The works of science fiction author Philip K. Dick have been a near-constant source of inspiration for Hollywood, from Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner in 1982 and the Ryan Gosling-starrer sequel last year, the 1990 and 2012 film versions of Total Recall, Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report with Tom Cruise in 2002, and the ongoing Amazon alt-history series The Man in the High Castle to name a few. The adaptations have garnered billions of dollars altogether, but more importantly, have shown that Dick’s stories and the themes within them – reality, corporatisation, and what it means to be human – are timeless.

And for the first time, his name itself has become part of the title. Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, an anthology sci-fi series based on his many short works, shows how influential and important Dick’s name is in the industry. That success has a layer of sadness to it as well. Science fiction is a big genre for the entertainment industry today, but it wasn’t looked at as fondly in the 50s and 60s when Dick wrote much of his early work. It had no place in mainstream literature, and the author – who died months before the premiere of Blade Runner – spent most of his life with financial troubles.

The new show – there are a total of 10 episodes in the first season, coming to Amazon Prime Video globally on Friday, after having aired six on Channel 4 in the UK – is a tribute to his legacy, and further cements the place of anthology series in TV’s new golden age. Their short nature is beneficial for both creators and audiences; it affords the former more creative freedom and flexibility, and it means less commitment for big actors, and the viewers, who don’t need to catch up on previous seasons to enjoy what’s on offer.

That’s why Electric Dreams has been able to draw together a powerful cast and crew. The likes of Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad), Steve Buscemi (Boardwalk Empire), Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner), Anna Paquin (True Blood), Terrence Howard (Empire), R&B artist Janelle Monáe, and Richard Madden (Game of Thrones) will be seen across episodes, with writers and directors borrowed from prestigious series such as Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, Battlestar Galactica, and the Potterverse.

Unlike Black Mirror, its closest cousin owing to the ‘anthology sci-fi’ label and Channel 4 home (that’s where Black Mirror got its start before jumping to Netflix), where Charlie Brooker has full creative control, and other anthology series such as Noah Hawley’s Fargo and Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story, there isn’t any central figure in the making of Electric Dreams. The show came together with the involvement of Cranston, Ronald D. Moore and Michael Dinner, and they chose to give free rein to the people brought on board.

Even in its story treatment, only a couple of the episodes are anything like Black Mirror. Dick’s work was always ahead of his time back in the day, and most of the short stories are still quite futuristic in their setting. While Black Mirror’s horror and eeriness comes from the fact that it offers a peek into a future just 10 minutes from now, most Electric Dreams episodes present a world that’s quite different from ours. The closest of the lot is “The Commuter”, starring Spall, while the farthest of the lot is “Impossible Planet”, written and directed by David Farr (The Night Manager).

Timothy Spall in a still from Electric Dreams’ “The Commuter” Photo Credit: Amazon/Channel 4

Incidentally, those two episodes are also opposites when it comes to quality of the show itself: “The Commuter” being the strongest, and “Impossible Planet” being the weakest. In the former, the wonderful Spall plays a dull middle-aged train station employee called Ed Jacobson. One day at the station, a commuter comes up to the ticket window and asks for a ticket to a non-existent town, but before he can figure out the problem, she disappears.

Ed is then pulled into the mystery, and tries to figure out whether the town actually exists. Frequent collaborators director Tom Harper (BBC’s War & Peace mini-series) and playwright Jack Throne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child) created the episode, easily the best of the lot. “The Commuter” works so well because it uses science fiction to chip away at the heart of our fantasies that we dream of to get away from our grim lives. It hits neatly at the idea of secretly wishing for something to ease your pain, but still choosing your screwed up life because you’ve invested so much in it.

In “Impossible Planet”, an elderly (over 300 years old) deaf rich woman called Irma (Geraldine Chaplin) comes knocking at the door of an agency specialising in space tourism in a new galaxy, where Andrews (Benedict Wong) and Norton (Jack Reynor) are two overworked and underpaid employees. She promises a hefty payment if they take her on a journey to Earth, but there’s just one problem: the planet has long been thought extinct.

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Jack Reynor and Geraldine Chaplin in a still from Electric Dreams’ “Impossible Planet” Photo Credit: Amazon/Channel 4

“Impossible Planet” makes changes to the story’s end-game, and gets rid of the final twist that Dick had incorporated, which is baffling because that’s what gives the story so much meaning. Instead, Electric Dreams focuses on the relationship between Norton and Irma, two individuals who had never met before but seem to share a past and memories. Though the developments hint at time travel at one point, the episode ultimately chooses to ignore that and go in a very different and unsatisfying direction.

In this way, episodes vary in how they interpret Dick’s work, either sticking close to the original word or merely using it as a base to tell their own tale. “Real Life”, written by Moore (Battlestar Galactica), completely changes the setting and the character’s background, only keeping the central idea: two individuals living in different time periods, but connected mysterious ways. One’s a lesbian cop Sarah (Paquin) in the future with a flying car, and the other is a black VR game designer George (Howard) in present day.

“Real Life” is about survivor’s guilt, with the character questioning whether she deserves happiness after having survived a gunfight that claimed the lives of 15 fellow officers. As for the sci-fi element, the episode tackles a constant Dickian theme of alternate realities, and the failure to discern the real from the virtual. “Real Life” will keep you guessing which reality is simulated to the very end, but that’s only if you can get past the cringe-worthy dialogue.

Anna Paquin in a still from Electric Dreams’ “Real Life” Photo Credit: Amazon/Channel 4

“Human Is”, the episode starring Cranston and Essie Davis (Game of Thrones), on the other hand, is much closer to Dick’s original story. Cranston plays an emotionally abusive husband and military general who returns from a battle a different man. He finds little joys in life, and rejuvenates the loveless and sexless marriage with his wife (Davis).

The episode’s 26th-century setting where mankind is reeling from limited oxygen supplies is just background chatter for “Human Is”, which gets at Dick’s core ideas of what it means to be human. If an alien lifeform is capable of showing love, kindness and sacrifice, does that make it more human than human? What is more important over the long run in a marriage: someone sticking with it, or someone who’s looking out for you?

While both “Human Is” and “Real Life” give concrete answers, other Electric Dreams episodes choose to have an ambiguous ending, such as the season opener “The Hood Maker”, starring Richard Madden (Game of Thrones) and Holliday Grainger (The Finest Hours) as work partners Agent Moss and Honor respectively, the latter of them being a mutant telepath, derogatorily known as ‘Teeps’. The episode deals with state surveillance, civil liberties, knowledge, evolution, and fear of the other.

Richard Madden and Holliday Grainger in a still from Electric Dreams’ “The Hood Maker” Photo Credit: Amazon/Channel 4

Madden and Grainger are both great in their roles, the latter especially for the vulnerability she brings to a character trying to please both sides, the Teep clan she belongs to and the police force she works for. The trouble is that a single 50-minute episode doesn’t give enough time to develop the characters and make you feel their pain. There are moments in “The Hood Maker” that don’t have the needed gravity and depth to them because you haven’t known these characters long enough.

That’s not a problem for most other episodes, and the themes the stories weave together are not only timely, but can also be read in more than one way at times. All of that is brought to life by some terrific actors, writers, and directors, and complemented by great visuals and impressive production values. It’s hit and miss for sure, but Dick’s prolificacy as a writer means Hollywood can keep returning to this well for many more fascinating sci-fi setups for years to come.

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