Art Star: JDub

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Dueling Film Reviews - Round One: JDub on "Mary and Max"

Writer/director Adam Elliot's 2009 film "Mary and Max" is proof that animation (claymation, in this case) is not always for children. Here, we have a film that deals with some very dark and adult issues, but looks at these issues through Mary, a very lonely young Australian girl, and her pen pal Max, an obese Jewish New Yorker suffering from Asperger's Syndrome. As Mary asks Max some of the most poignant questions in life, we see her adorable ignorance held up against Max's highly analytical and literal outlook on life.

Mary and Max are quite a pair, and through their 20 year-long correspondence, they face the world together--from the despair of isolation and loss to the joy of having everything they'd always wanted. There is much to say about the plot of "Mary and Max," and a number of reviewers I've run across have gone that route, but what really interests me about this film is the choice of claymation as a medium and what Elliot has done with it.

Firstly, I should mention that I have a soft spot for claymation, especially the classic strange, dry British wit found in Wallace and Gromit, for example. Regardless, "Mary and Max" is a breathtaking example of what can be done visually with clay. Though the film has a largely monochromatic color palette, save a bright orange-red that pops up here and there, the level of detail and pragmatism in dealing with "real-world" settings is fantastic. For example:

If you really give this image a close look at full resolution, you will begin to get a sense for the sheer quantity of detail in every scene of the film, both in the foreground and the background. As one Web reviewer has already noted, nothing Pixar or Dreamworks could create can touch this painstaking attention to detail, as "the computers couldn't render it, or only ass slow." What's more, these details ooze with character and fascinating imperfection, adding quirk and charm to the film.

But I think the choice of clay as a medium has deeper implications than the level and quality of detail for which it allows. Traditional animation (and computer animation, for that matter) is characterized by allowing the animator to create an imaginary world in which to set their story. This allows for the animation of anything that can be imagined, because even the most implausible characters, settings, and situations can be represented visually on screen. Contrast this with traditional live action filming, sans CGI or special effects, which requires real people in real places to create the illusion of the fictional characters and their fictional situations.

With clay, however, you are indeed creating your own fantasy world, but by introducing the use of the real camera to photograph your real clay models, a certain degree of tangibility or "realness" is injected into the product. The clay artist is free to create whatever they can imagine, as with animation, but in the end, a real model must be photographed by a real camera, as with live action filming.

Therefore, I'd say that "Mary and Max" does not take place in THE real world so much as it takes place in A real world--one in which the Statue of Liberty is a fat man and houseflies have strangely large, blinking eyes rather than creepy tiny segmented eyes.

Still, one does not need to know that this film is based on a true story to feel resonate it as such. Further, this is a film whose plot is based on a true story and whose setting is based on the real world, and that sort of symmetry is difficult to attain outside of the claymation medium.

"Mary and Max" may be a dark and even disturbing film at times, but the way in which it is executed is hilarious and absolutely charming, adding just the right amount of lightness for an enjoyable viewing experience. In my mind, a live action version of this film would be mostly without this humor and charm and therefore a much bigger pill to swallow, but a traditionally animated version of the film would lose that tangibility and resonance introduced by real clay and real cameras.

So, track this film down, give it a watch, post your comments and opinions, and as always, stay tuned for next week's follow up articles.

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The Top 5 Art Star Series Of All Time

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Dueling Film Reviews - Round One: JDub on "Wait Until Dark"

It is hard to watch a film like director Terence Young's 1967 suspense/thriller "Wait Until Dark" without being unfairly critical, especially if the film has 20 years on you like it does me. Audrey Hepburn is iconic even in current terms, but I still wasn't expecting the kind of strength, grace, and resolve she brought to her role as a (not so) helpless blind housewife.

There is no denying that this is a truly excellent film, but there are some interesting ways in which it shows its age, and this is where the unfairly critical stuff starts coming out. A modern movie viewer with modern expectations will find that some of the dialogue seems contrived and poorly delivered--especially in the early scenes.

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Dueling Film Reviews - Round Two: JDub on WHayes

WHayes says that he hesitates to call Funny People inconsistent. I, however, do not hesitate to do exactly that. The movie's title tells us one way to approach interpreting each scene as they relate to the film as a whole. Perhaps one focus of Funny People is on the comedians, comedic actors, and other celebs in the movie and how they act and interact with fans and one another on day-to-day terms. For me, that would net a sufficiently light-hearted and entertaining film.

Then there's George's disease and his having to cope with his apparent mortality which demonstrates the dehumanizing effect of one's celebrity status. George's fame, in a way, has driven his so far away from meaningful human interaction that he's forced to pay Ira to keep him company. All of a sudden, George finds himself helpless and alone surrounded by an enormous house filled with expensive things. His audiences are so far disconnected from his reality that they cheer him no matter how depressing he is on stage. This conflict, and his building a relationship with Ira, add a pleasant amount of depth and struggle to the sufficiently light-hearted and entertaining film.

The problem for me comes when we discover that Funny People is actually supposed to be about how George let Laura get away and how his terminal disease stirs up his feelings for her. The way I see it, we've now taken a nice, light-hearted, entertaining comedy with sufficient depth and struggle (and romance between Ira and Daisy, to boot) and essentially Frankensteined a third arm onto a film that already had two perfectly good ones, thank you very much.

For this, I would absolutely call Funny People inconsistent because the film itself cannot seem to decide what it wants to be about. If it should indeed about George's attempt to rekindle his romance with Laura, then I agree with WHayes' notion of the cameos becoming "clouding and distracting." One of the movie's three arms must go.

I find myself wondering why I find Laura and her husband Clarke to be the two least interesting and/or believable characters in Funny People... and what the hell is wrong with the movie having only those first two arms?

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Dueling Film Reviews - Round One: JDub on "Funny People"

If you're anything like me, you hear of a film coming out directed by Judd Apatow and starring many of his usual suspects in Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, plus Adam Sandler, and you get a little excited. Apatow is a quintessential auteur, and because of this, I personally find myself going into his films with certain expectations.

Namely, I expect anything he's written, directed, and/or produced to be funny, basically light-hearted, and not terribly deep. These usually aren't the kind of films you'd expect to see win very many awards with the Academy, but you know they'll be fun and entertaining none the less.

At a very basic level, Apatow's "Funny People" seems to follow right along with these trends. I find the dialogue hilarious and less contrived than it could have been. But don't be fooled: in fact, this film is a drama masquerading as an Apatow comedy. Yes, it's funny, and yes, it's generally light-hearted, but it's also nearly two and a half hours long, and deals in noticably heavier subject matter than one might have expected.

Most Apatow films celebrate casual sex, the use of drugs and alcohol, materialism, and generally deviant behavior, but it is all of these things which Adam Sandler's character rejects when he learns he has a terminal form of cancer. Sandler is excellent in the role: snarky, jaded, and yet totally oppressed by his momento mori. Contrast this with Seth Rogen's character, an aspiring comic who suddenly is thrust into the celebrity lifestyle: his fresh sense of wonder highlights Sandler's depression.

I think "Funny People" employs some of the most effective celebrity cameos of any film I've ever seen. Because Adam Sandler is playing himself, a celebrity, his relationship with other celebrities on screen causes them to become true characters in the film. James Taylor yells "Fuck Facebook!" after a set of music at a MySpace corporate function, Sara Silverman cracks vagina jokes with Sandler just before delivering a pretty excellent stand up comedy routine on camera. Marshall Mathers yells profanely (and hilariously) at Ray Romano across a restaurant for very little reason. There is definitely a focus on humanizing celebrities in this film by presenting them as belivable people.

I'm very satisfied with what Apatow's been able to do with "Funny People," yet I am simlutaneously aware that the film seems to fail somehow. It is simply too damn long. I could have done without perhaps thirty to forty-five minutes of the second half scenes. In the end, the film seems to lack a unified focus because of its rambling length.

Obviously there have been plenty of films to straddle the line between comedy and drama effectively, but "Funny People" seems to shift between purely comedic scenes, and scenes of drama, rather than allowing the two to coexist. The cast carries this film, elevating a bloated, Frankenstein script to something with a very real, natural feel and plenty of humor. Now, if only the script weren't stepping on those toes...

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Round Two: JDub on WHayes on "Where the Wild Things Are"

Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" absolutely does have that unfinished feel WHayes talks about, but I am going to have to disagree on the hipster moodiness argument because, well, the film almost embodies the indie hipster melancholy. Even moments of pure happiness and joy are still seen through that brooding, earthy color palete and they're further tainted by the nagging sense that no happiness, joy, or love can come without the price of a corresponding amount of unhappiness, pain, and hate.

A friend of mine suggests that Jonze, instead of adapting a children's book into a film, has actually created an adult version of a children's' book in this case, and I tend to agree. If children's books are allegorical in nature, then it seems like Jonze has forced Max to face a literal version of the book's allegory in the film. For me, this attempt was unsuccessful because not only did Max have trouble understanding the conflict around him, but I--as an adult--did too.

Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are" suffers in its lack of depth, development, and explanation. I don't get the sense that Max has changed at all, except to discover that his childhood notion of being a king is certainly not all its cracked up to be. Kids these days are "growing up" faster than ever before, and this is perhaps part of the difficulty in bringing "Where the Wild Things Are" to the big screen in this day and age.

The book was published first in 1963, a time when it was still alright for kids to be kids. Honestly, the original story was about as shallow as they come: a simple escape into the imagination for an uninhibited romp with big fluffy beasties. Obviously a shallow story in the book does not cause an incomplete story in the film, but it is immediately apparent to anyone familiar with the book where the original story ends and the new one begins. A lot has had to be added to force the story to fit inside the moody indie hipster film box, and I think even more should have been added.

Again, I agree that Jonze deserves credit for a pretty amazing piece of cinema. It's certainly cohesive, as WHayes points out the integration of live-action and CGI is flawless, the music is solid, and the acting is good. But, after having looked forward to the film from the moment I knew it would be happening, I honestly did not enjoy the final product. The journey across the ocean to the island of the Wild Things is meant to be an escape from the adult world, but I don't agree with WHayes that it ever feels remotely like a fairytale: to me, it feels like Max was never able to imagine away the adult world at all.

Where's the idealism without resistance or hesitation? Where the hell is all the drama between the Wild Things really coming from? What's the fun in watching a failed attempt at escapism? And, what kid's imagination would come up with all of that stuff, anyway?

The feeling in my gut is that Jonze's film is showing a world in which there really is no such thing as childhood (and parents who think the film is too scary for kids can just go to Hell according to Sendak), but I sincerely hope this world never exists.

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Round One: JDub on "Where the Wild Things Are"

So everyone got all excited when word came out that Spike Jonze was getting a hold of Maurice Sendak's timeless kid's book "Where the Wild Things Are." I must admit that I was among that group of people. My parents read the book to me when I was a kid, and I remember being absolutely stoked to find out they'd be making it into a movie.

There are many things about the film that Jonze got right. He found a cute enough kid, the CGI beasties are surprisingly belivable as living creatures, the music is fabulous in that indie sort of way, and even the movie's earthy color palette does an excellent job of informing its heavy, brooding tone.

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Round Two of Chasing Amy: JDub on WHayes

WHayes, I love it, dude. It seems to me that your feelings toward Chasing Amy have arisen because you romanticized it. You heard witty and believable dialogue where there really was none. You were smitten, and when you realized that, it left a bitter taste in your mouth.

Holden must have felt about the same way when he realized how far behind Alyssa he was sexually, and as men tend to do, he tried to fix the "problem," rather than accepting things for how they are. Alyssa can revisit her sexually adventurous years as readily as we can rewrite Amy's contrived dialogue and remake a more "perfect" film.

But just because two people can virtually never totally reconcile themselves to each other doesn't mean you can't go right on loving the film as before, nor does it necessarily mean the book is closed on Holden and Alyssa's relationship. After all, the whole sappy, over-wrought point of Chasing Amy seems to be that no relationship can be perfect, and two people don't have to be "perfect for each other" to be in love.

I heard somewhere that love is all you need...

In the end, I guess we're left right where we started. Holden is going to have to fall in love with Alyssa all over again for exactly who she is (for real this time), and WHayes, you must do the same with Chasing Amy. It's the original bromantic comedy, after all.

And, in other news, I finally understand that wordless conversation Holden and Banky shared at the end of the film, thanks to the very charitable work of some very skilled linguists and sign language experts:

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Dueling Film Reviews - Round One: JDub on "Chasing Amy"

Kevin Smith's (aka Silent Bob) 1997 film "Chasing Amy" treads through some of the same territory as the Disney movies we've been discussing. Holden (Ben Affleck) and his partner Banky (Jason Lee) are partnered comic book artists whose friendship is put through the wringer when Holden falls for Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams).

For Holden, the trouble with Alyssa is that she turns out to be a lesbian, but naturally he persists and is eventually successful in sparking a loving romantic relationship with her. This effectively alienates Banky, who feels their friendship threatened.

When Holden then learns of Alyssa's sexually adventurous past, it causes him to feel inadequate and inexperienced, which gives him cause to melodramatically call their otherwise thriving romance into question.

But he has a plan after all. Holden's instinct is to find a way to line his real life up with his ideal life floating around in his head (because the story must end with a "happily ever after"). The only way he sees to gain some experience, get closer with Alyssa, and simultaneously fill the rift between him and Banky is through a thoughtfully contrived threesome.

Holden must propose the idea to his best friend and girlfriend as they sit side-by-side on the couch, and I must say that Ben Affleck really nails the scene. Molding the world to fit his vision has clearly become a labor of love, and he can almost taste that greener grass.

Banky agrees, but Alyssa insists that part of her life is over, and she also won't share Holden with anyone. Holden's insistence that he needs the experience and his relationships will be better for it is now at the expense of Alyssa and Banky's reality. Creating an "unreal" version of themselves simply to appease Holden's desires is not only too much to ask of his friends, but it also creates an unreal resolution to a real problem.

Holden's plan drives the three apart in the end, and this makes way for a "one year later" prologue scene. At a comic signing, Holden spots Banky from across the room and the two share a wordless conversation that seems to say "not yet dude, but some day, time will heal these wounds."

Holden has poured his emotions and experience into a comic which overtly details his and Alyssa's story, and he hadn't even changed their names. The camera allows the viewer to see a panel dominated by the words "I'm sorry Alyssa, wherever you are," and Holden leaves the room having said what he came to say.

But what does this sappy overwrought comic book mean for Holden's character? Maybe relegating his failures to a fictional-feeling comic book can allow everyone to "close the book" on that part of their story together. Maybe Holden is a dynamic character after all, having realized that forcing his girlfriend and best friend into a contrived threesome was probably not the best idea.

Or maybe the sappy overwrought comic book represents a thriving obsession with his failed fantasy. Maybe Holden was hoping he'd be able to tell his kids that his awesome comic book changed things between him and Alyssa forever, and that he definitely hasn't crossed the line between thoughtful and fanatic.

It's unclear to me which is the case. Anyone care to comment?

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Call it What it Is: Britney Spears and "Live Performance"

Dear Readers: I am posting this as a discussion piece, so please make sure you leave your comments below.

Some friends of mine recently saw Britney live in Greensboro, North Carolina, and they were raving about her performance. It seems that she actually sang two or three of her songs at this particular show, which I've come to understand is highly unusual for her. Britney has long been known for her lip-synced shows, and plenty of people are upset. Everyone remembers the stink around Ashlee Simpson's famous snafu on SNL..

Still, this public knowledge does not keep Britney's concerts from selling out, and her ticket prices can border on the insane. There is no denying the huge market out there for what she and her contemporaries are doing, but I think everyone could benefit from a little change in nomenclature.

People aren't paying to see Britney make music, they are paying, rather, to see her put on a great show. They don't line up down the block to see her create, they wait to see her execute her highly choreographed and endlessly rehearsed set of dances while pretending to sing (most of the time). Granted, someone somewhere had to create the backing tracks and the lyrics and the costuming and the dance moves and the lighting effects... But my point is that none of this creation actually takes place on stage, the show itself is created beforehand.

This, to me, is not at all the same thing as what a group such as Radiohead, for example, does when they put on a show, and you can bet if their fans caught wind that there was any lip-syncing going on there at all, it would cheapen the experience.

So a group like Radiohead sets out to play their music live on stage in front of a crowd of fans, while the Britney types are simply performing to pre-recorded tracks (more often than not). I should point out, though, that I certainly do not mean to be making value judgments against Miss Spears, or any performer for that matter. I'm not saying a band which makes music on stage is somehow better than a lip-syncer.. That's for you to decide.

What I am saying is that, strictly speaking, Britney is not making music, and she thereby should not be referred to as a musician, or categorized with them either. Instead, I say we call it was it is: Live Performance. Let us not compare apples and oranges any longer. Perhaps Billboard should consider compiling a "Top 40" list of "Performers," and a "Top 40" list of "Musicians" (or something similar). I see no reason in the world why Pop stars should be held to the same standards as groups who truly create music when they perform (and vice versa).

Again, we're interested in your opinion, so please comment!

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Dueling Film Reviews - Round One: JDub on The Hurt Locker

People have been recommending I watch The Hurt Locker for some time now, and everyone was saying the same thing: they all loved it in spite of being sick and tired of war movies.

I too am sick and tired of war movies (and zombie/vampire movies), but we've seen Inglorious Basterds to be a fresh and compelling take on the World War II era. It is not a "war movie" per se, but rather a movie set during a war.

The Hurt Locker does use a very standard "war movie" organizing structure: the battle scene. The plot is driven by successive fights, standoffs, skirmishes, and and chases which move the characters and the viewer through the story.

But indeed there is something different about this film.. something that sets it apart from previous war movies. Sure, it may be about American soldiers in combat situations in Iraq, but it doesn't feel, function, or end in the way in which we'd expect a classic war movie to feel, function, or end.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that The Hurt Locker isn't actually a war movie at all.

The fighting and bloodshed in traditional war movies is virtually always validated in the end when the forces of good prevail over the forces of evil. The battles can only be significant and interesting if they affect some kind of change and drive the movie's plot to a resolution.

In The Hurt Locker, however, we get no sense of progress, nor do we get the sense that all of the conflict and killing is leading anywhere tangible at all. To me, it becomes a film about survival, with the number of days remaining on their detail constantly flashing on screen always reminding us how much longer they must survive, and every minute is tense.

Rather than end with a great victory or an epic honorable martyr-like death for one or more of the characters, The Hurt Locker ends more or less as it started: another day, another bomb to diffuse. There seems to be an infinite number of unexploded IED's and random insurgents, and we dont get much in the way of reason to believe the conflict will ever end at all.

Insead, I'd call The Hurt Locker a survival film set within a war. It seems to be more focused on its portrayal of Iraq post US invasion and on the effect Iraq has on the soldiers. There is hope present, somehow: not hope of an end to the conflict, but rather a simpler kind of hope that the characters will at least live to see tomorrow... but they'll just be risking it all again.

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Round Two: JDub on WHayes

"Yet -- and I mean this -- not everyone deserves to be special. Pixar gets this, and their oeuvre supports that claim.* The exceptional rise to the top, while those of the status quo get left behind. " -WHayes on Disney Pixar's Up

I feel like I've heard this somewhere before... Ohh that's right... Disney Pixar itself expressed much the same sentiment in another one of their movies already....

Disney Pixar's "Ratatouille's" main character, a rat named Remy, strives to become a great chef in the city of Paris. Remy idolizes a famous chef named Gusteau, and he considers Gusteau's book, entitled "Anyone Can Cook," to be a great chef's instruction manual.

Their biggest critic is Anton Ego, a dark and brooding journalist who is only too eager to slam Remy's cooking. By the end of "Ratatouille," however, Remy succeeds in making a dish (ratatouille, believe it or not) which takes Ego back to his childhood and ultimately wins his praise.

Ego's review of Remy's cooking at the end of the film is naturally quite complimentary, but it also offers a different take on the meaning of the title of Chef Gusteau's book:

"In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto, "Anyone can cook". But I realize - only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere."

The bold part is the important part. The message WHayes pulls out of "Up" is that even an old man, a random and strangely ambiguously ethnic boy, and a talking Golden Retriever can be special, remarkable, great. Not everyone can be remarkable, but a remarkable person can come from anywhere. This now seems to be a common theme in these Disney Pixar movies.

WHayes takes it a step farther by mentioning Disney Pixar's "The Incredibles" because this film depicts remarkable people who have been forced to live unremarkably. His idea is that remarkable people are born that way, and are so permanently.

This point WHayes offers in addendum to the main one, and now I will offer an addendum to this addendum: it seems to me that all of these Disney Pixar films are also demonstrating that it requires great adversity and terrible odds to force these characters to realize their remarkableness. It is only because Carl and Russell find themselves clinging to the side of a flying zeppelin that they discover their ability to cling to the side of a flying zeppelin.

And so, WHayes and JDub present "The Gospel, According to Pixar:"

"Remarkable people can come from all walks of life, and although it always requires a challenge, quest, or some kind of adversity for them to realize that they are remarkable, they're all born that way. So kids, dont be afraid of adventure, danger, scrutiny, and tribulation: these things are what allow you to realize your remarkableness, after all."

It seems to be this message that Disney Pixar is communicating in many of their films, and for my money (and my future kids), this is a far better moral than that of life being the persuit of some unatainable "happily ever after" idea.

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Round 1: JDub on Disney Pixar's Up

Disney may not have come up with the idea of ending a story with the "happily ever after" concept, but they sure did perfect it. They also managed to convince 50 years worth of children that "happily ever after" is the way stories should end. Even in real life.

Most of the time, the "happily ever after" idea is evoked surrounding Disney characters finally getting together romantically. In "Cinderella," they ride together in a fancy carriage toward his fancy castle, and the story "ends" with their marriage.

Pixar's latest film "Up" begins by spending about ten minutes setting up a love story between Carl and Ellie, and this time, their marriage is the film's point departure. Their archetypal "happily ever after" moment sets off one of the greatest montages I've ever seen, but the message Pixar ends up sending here is far less idealistic than it has been throughout Disney's past.

Carl and Ellie's goal was always to make it to Paradise Falls in South America as part of their "Adventure, On!" mantra. The montage shows them throwing change into a large jar to try and save enough money to buy plane tickets to Paradise Falls.

But as it invariably seems to do out here in the real world, life manages to get in the way. The opening montage shows things like tires going flat and storms damaging their house, which force Carl and Ellie to have to dip in to their Paradise Falls fund for repairs. As the montage closes, Carl and Ellie grow old together, living their life and simply never making it to Paradise Falls.

The conflict between the "happily ever after" ideal and the reality of Carl and Ellie's life seems to be what drives Carl to make a last ditch effort to get to Paradise Falls and tie a ton of balloons to his house and float on down there. Obviously a certain element of fantasy will pervade kids' movies, but I'm quite happy to see modern Disney working to right the ideological wrongs of Classic Disney: there's no such thing as "Prince Charming," and life will always get in the way of "happily ever after."

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Round Two: JDub on WHayes

WHayes' notion that "Inglorious Basterds" is a kind of new or fresh take on the war movies genre and especially on the WWII movies genre is certainly not without its merits. But I think that there are a few very important distinctions to be made here.

If I were asked to give a rough definition for what a film fitting into the "war movie" genre should include, I would say that it must depict soldiers in a wartime situation, and it must show these soldiers in at least one battle. Basterds depicts soldiers of a sort, but they're soldiers in a made-up squad, which operates in a way in which no military squad has been known to operate. And yes, these soldiers are depicted in battle, but these battles relate in no way to what was actually occurring in those times.

As far as Basterds fitting into the narrower "WWII movie" genre, I'm even less convinced. Aside from depicting Nazis in situations which could have actually happened, the film took place in the same era and location as WWII, but that's about all that can be said. No real WWII events were shown or even really discussed. The plot of the film was centered around fictitious characters in made-up situations and eventually led to Hitler meeting a totally fabricated manner.

Thus, I would say that while "Inglorious Basterds" does possess some of the features of the war movie and WWII movie genres, its made-up-ness prevents it from being able to participate in these modes.

WHayes calls this film a "welcome relief" from the over-played WWII movie genre, but I disagree with this assessment. I question whether Basterds fits into either of these genres well enough to assume this relieving role. This film, for me, represents an entirely different, or even entirely new, genre: one which takes a time and place in history as a point of departure for a totally new and unique work of fiction.

I can't decide if Basterds is deliberately pretending to fit into the WWII movie genre, or if it is simply evoking it for sake of differentation, but for me, the fact remains: this film is not the "welcome relief," the next advancement in the genre of WWII films WHayes suggests it is. It instead fits itself into a broader "historical fiction"-type mode, and there's certainly nothing fresh about that either. The film's freshness may instead stem from a hyper-comical imposition of Post Modern values and humor onto a very serious, and indeed somewhat sacred, text that is our culture's memory of World War II.

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How to Use the Machines for Good - RJD2's "Ghostwriter"

A number of my previous posts have discussed the use of machines and computers to process naturally created music, especially vocals, for sonic effect. As pervasive as technology is these days in our society, it is becoming more and more normal for pop music on the radio to be heavily processed, to include digital samples of other music, or even to have been produced entirely on a computer (crank that Soulja Boy).

While it may not hit the radio waves any time soon, RJD2's "Ghostwriter" is an example of a song which was produced entirely of samples pieced together electronically.

Listen to RJD2's "Ghostwriter"

Many of the samples you hear in songs on the radio are only lightly modified or often lifted exactly from the original song, providing a sense of evocation and sometimes tribute. Jason Derülo's "Whatcha Say" prominently samples Imogen Heap's classic "Hide and Seek," evoking the song's history and lyrics while presenting it in a new paradigm.

Jason Derülo's "Whatcha Say" on YouTube

Using a sample evocatively, as in "Whatcha Say," often results in the sample needing to be manipulated to fit into the new song, perhaps by changing its tempo or pitch, or by processing it further still. Regardless, the moment a sample in a new song reminds you of the original song, the use of electronic manipulation is clearly recognizable.

The samples in RJD2's "Ghostwriter," however, operate in an entirely different manner. Rather than evoke a popular tune from yesteryear, RJD2 pieces together older and more obscure samples to create an entirely original piece of music. From Wikipedia, the recognizable samples in "Ghostwriter" are:

"I Didn't Understand" Elliott Smith from his album XO.
"Secretary" by Betty Wright
The beginning of "Timesteps" by Wendy Carlos from the movie "A Clockwork Orange"

The point is that "Ghostwriter" appears to be a fairly apt name for a song which was created totally electronically, but hides this fact. I could picture it being performed live by the right group of musicians with absolutely no use of digital equipment at all.

Aside from some sundry reversed samples and volume swells, the guitar, drums, bass, horns, and vocal parts sound for all the world like they were recorded in the studio as primary source. The samples no longer sound obviously like samples, but instead sound like normal, intentionally composed and recorded parts. Its as if a modern painter stripped paint from the canvasses of old works and applied them to a new canvas in totally new styles and compositions as though the paint were being used for the first time.

Because of this, I think of "Ghostwriter" as a piece of music which was composed, arranged, and produced by a unique artist without the overt reliance on digital editing and effects. The trained ear certainly recognizes it as a work of sampling, but the digital equipment is used as transparently as possible. In this way, the machine stands aside and allows direct connection between artist and listener the way any live recording of a band would.

Its record album scratchiness and the varying ages of its samples result in an aesthetic which has been described as "amateruish," somewhat rough, raw, and accessible. I think the song celebrates this aesthetic with a wry grin: creating such a "human" work of art digitally is very hard work indeed.

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Dueling Film Reviews: JDub on Inglourious Basterds

This week, WHayes and I are reviewing Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds." I ended up loving this film--in spite of Brad Pitt's atrocious accent--and I'll even say it might be Tarantino's most palatable creation yet. Normally his films are just a bit too heavy-handed with the blood and guts, but "Inglourious Basterds" balances this with outrageous humor and incredible acting, writing, and cinematic value.

I have found myself bombarded by the enormous marketing budget of this film. Because of how it's trailer pervades TV, the Internet, and theater previews, I feel like I've seen it a hundred times without even trying. Take a look if you're needing a refresher:

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi3738173977/

To be frank, this preview simply did not make me want to go out of my way to see the movie. The portrayal was simply too slapstick, too violent, and the scenes in it were too clearly out of context to have really been appealing to me. The shorter previews on TV are even worse: boiling a two and a half hour film down to a bunch of shooting, a silly portrayal of Hitler, and Brad Pitt's over-acting.

I guess I should have expected more knowing Tarantino's very serious, artsy auteur persona, but regardless, this film may have been wildly violent and strangely silly, yet these moments were framed in a very, very high quality cinematic production. The casting and acting were incredible, especially Mike Myers' contribution: far less campy than we've come to expect from Mr. Crazy Character Actor.

The point is that the previews for "Inglourious Basterds" turned out to be portraying something very different from the actual movie. Everything about it that would turn me off from wanting to see it was crammed together in the trailers, and everything that I felt made the film so exceptional was ignored. The notion that violently killin' Nazis and silly Hitler alone are enough to attract as large an audience as possible for the film does not compute for me.

Give me a trailer that is a purposefully transparent portrayal of what I can expect from a film, or else you run the risk of attracting too small or too narrow an audience. Let your work speak for itself.

Dear Universal Pictures,

Why?

Love,

JDub

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Round Two: JDub on WHayes

WHayes and I are discussing Duncan Jones' "Moon" (2009) this week, so be sure to check out both of our previously posted dueling film reviews from before the weekend.

It seems to me that WHayes is too quick to call "Moon" a work of "pastiche"--a hodge-podge or imitative genre of art. Instead, I think the film should be viewed from the standpoint of intertextuality, which means that rather than being a patchwork of copies, it is art created from other art, in response.

Take Gertie's voice for example. Kevin Spacey does an excellent job of invoking HAL from "2001, A Space Odyssey," which gave me an immediate sense of the creepy evil robot which will work to undermine humanity. Think of the command center robot from "WALL-E," named simply AUTO, which evokes the same creepy underminer image, and in this case, does indeed work to undermine the captain and keep the humans from going back to Earth.

But instead of taking that concept in patchwork, "Moon" uses Gertie's evocation to twist our expectations so that his turning out to be on Sam's side is a surprise. In this way, the film's use of intertextuality as a lens rather than a copied part is artistic and fresh, rather than simply a tired re-creation.

WHayes, there's a difference between artists ripping each other off and on artist using an existing work of art to enhance and enrich his own art. There are simply too many differences in the message of "Moon" from those in "2001" and "High Noon" and the others.

What's more, instead of writing "Moon" off as pastiche, viewing it from the intertextual angle allows us to get over ourselves as reviewers and not somehow feel guilty for liking it. It's a hell of a film, really. Not perfect, but what really is?

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Dueling Film Reviews: JDub on "Moon"

Having premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, director Duncan Jones' "Moon" is an interesting type of SciFi/Thriller. The exotic moonscape setting and futuristic technology at the base play second fiddle to the intense introspective drama of the lead character, Sam Bell as played by Sam Rockwell of "Frost/Nixon" and "Choke."

As the only human staff present on a moon base which harvests 75% of the world's clean energy, Sam Bell is dependent upon Gertie, his robot companion, to fulfill most of his duties and for a source of companionship. Using Kevin Spacey as the voice of Gertie clearly invokes "2001, A Space Odyssey's" HAL, which allows for quite a deft misdirection. I felt myself waiting for this creepy-voiced robot named Gertie to turn out to be evil and ruin things for Sam. But in a twist I certainly wasn't expecting, Gertie became a willing and faithful accomplice in Sam's effort to escape the base.

There is much to say about the film's portrayal of the personal isolation Sam feels due to being alone on the moon. It's more than just the distance, time, or solitude: in fact, the technology which surrounds Sam and makes his life on the moon possible is, I would argue, the main source of his isolation--especially his isolation from himself.

As Sam lives out his three year contract at the lunar base, he communicates with Earth regularly. But because of technical difficulties with the satellite in lunar orbit, he is forced to record his messages before sending, and all replies from Earth must be recorded as well. This lack of live, real-time communication provides one layer of isolation, but Sam seems to find just enough human interaction in the recorded messages from his wife to get by.

It is not until the accident about two weeks before his scheduled return to Earth that Sam recognizes the full extent of his solitude. Having been saved from exposure to the vacuum of space by his own clone, Sam turns to Gertie (a piece of technology) asking for answers, but is instead met with deflection and refusal. At first, his own clone won't even talk to him either.

In desperation, he takes a lunar rover outside of the base's radius of interference and, turning to another piece of technology, tries to contact his wife and young daughter. Instead of reaching his wife, Sam reaches his daughter, who is now 15 years old and who also explains that her mother has since passed. Rather than lessening his apparent isolation, the phone call only serves to make clear to Sam just how isolated he's been all along.

There are clear parallels between this technological isolation and the pitfalls of using a machine as an intermediary for human emotional connection.

With "Moon," the technology is used deliberately to keep Sam in isolation, and to keep him blissfully ignorant of it all. The company which owns the lunar base has clearly gone to a great deal of trouble to construct a three-year life for each successive Sam Clone, implanting false memories of a family on Earth, jamming the lunar satellite to prohibit live transmissions, and having Gertie knowingly watch over it all.

With things like online social networking however, the goal is always to lessen someones isolation from society by providing a means for instant communication and exchange of information over any distance. Again, it is clear that things like Facebook and MySpace are quite useful for keeping in touch over long distances, but when these services are allowed to stand in for actual face-to-face human interaction, the kind of technological isolation Sam Bell experiences begins to creep into our lives.

On the subject of music in "Moon," I can say that I was very excited to hear more of Clint Mansell's film scoring work after becoming such a fan of his soundtrack to "Requiem for a Dream." Mansell's score for "Moon" did an impressive job of combining traditional, organically melodic piano lines with the classic dystopic futuristic screeching sound effects that seem to represent the film's struggle between the organic human and the technological machine.

However, other parts of Mansell's score deliver exactly the sort of pseudo-angelic tone clusters and minimalism we have all come to associate with film and film music depictions of space and space travel (think the very beginning of the intro to "Star Trek: The Next Generation"). I think Mansell could certainly have thought a bit more outside of the music box. Perhaps he could have used the same kind of post modern self-referential irony that Gertie's creepy voice and clear reference to "2001, A Space Odyssey's" evil HAL enriches the revelation that Gertie is in fact most interested in being helpful to Sam rather than a hindrance.

I also have this problem with the film's premise: it seems to me that no organization would ever create a base of operations, especially on the moon, which is staffed by only one person--clone or not. This point is crucial to the drama of the film, however, and it causes the word "contrived" to come to my mind.

In all, however, "Moon" is an exceptionally acted, beautifully shot and edited, and thoughtfully conceived film. Sam Rockwell's mostly solo performance is very compelling, the director's skill shows through, and Mansell's score is powerful as expected.

Stay tuned for my comments on WHayes' review and his on mine this time Monday.

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If They're Worth Hearing, They're Worth Hearing Live

Let's be sure we have the basic math worked out:

Mofo + Afro = Mofro

Front man JJ Grey writes about his childhood home in Florida, a lake called Lochloosa, while on tour in England. Or so he tells us as he politely taps out the intro melody/harmony on the electric piano. The title song from Mofro's 2004 album Lochloosa is one of their more popular pieces, and my favorite of all.

Lochloosa by JJ Grey and Mofro

The second time I saw Mofro live at the Neighborhood Theater in Charlotte, North Carolina, I was just finishing up in the little boys' room when they started playing it. I finished rapidly and elbowed my way into the standing room crowd back to two great friends and our PBR Tallboys.

The song's text is JJ's clear desire to return to his homeland of northern Florida, back to the huge old trees, the swamplands, the heat, and retreating away from commercial development.

I love the studio version of this song, and I listen to it frequently. Standing alone as a musical recording, it is excellent: dynamic, heart-felt, and full of soul. But because a simple audio recording can only appeal to one of our five human senses, I'm always left hanging and trying to recall my two experiences with the band in concert.

Hearing the studio recording of "Lochloosa" allows, I think, for easy and very effective understanding of the song's subject matter. Through my sense of hearing, I can construct my impression of JJ and his longing for home. The soul comes through the recording equipment, through the iTunes Store, through the mp3 data, and through my stereo loud and clear.

But as I was saying last week, art is about the creation of a connection between two people through a common emotional identification. When you take as many of the machines and computers out of the equation as possible seeing Mofro live, you also add four more sensory experiences to the blend that will become your connection.

Rather than simply hearing and understanding JJ's words and feeling a bit of his soul, the live experience allows you to hear the band and the crowd, see the stage and the people around you, smell and taste the beer, sweat, and joy, and feel the woofers resonating your skeleton.

While the studio recording of "Lochloosa" is carefully through-composed, their rendition of the song live is relaxed and spontaneous: the intro allowing for JJ to verbally connect with the crowd and tell the story of how the song came to be, the latter portions allowing for ripping trumpet, guitar, and tenor sax solos which are certainly missed on the album version. Mofro's live sound simply seems fuller, richer, and more complete than their album sound, especially with the addition of horns on stage.

The enormous ceiling fan forces fresher air down into a crowd of people who have long since ceased to be an audience to JJ Grey and Mofro. The band's connection with itself, its connection with the crowd, and the crowd's connection with itself in common identifcation with the text are all so complete that all are now a part of the whole art taking place.

Everyone has their own personal version of Lochloosa, the home of their childhood, their roots, and everyone knows the feeling of being separated from their Lochloosa. JJ Grey's brilliance as a musician is his ability to cause his guitar, harmonica, electric piano, etc to get out of the way of the art and allow a whole room of personal human connections to occur in the live setting. Because the "audience" is as invested in the emotion of the song as the band, the live experience of "Lochloosa" is an event of complete art. It ceases to be a song about JJ and his roots and becomes a song about all of our commonality in the human experience of having roots.

JJ Grey and Mofro are certainly worth hearing, but they're even more worth hearing live.

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Auto Tune, Machines, Art, and Humanity

Many of our first experiences with the infamous and ever-popular "Auto Tune" came from hearing things like Daft Punk's "One More Time." In other words, many of us came to associate Auto Tune fringe electronica with purposefully non-human voices singing very simple, but very vague lyrics.

The thing about this song when it came out in early 2001 is that it fit neatly into a genre of music which is based entirely on its total dependence on the computers and machines necessary to create it. Sure, some of the music you hear in "One More Time" came from samples of people playing real instruments (probably), but the song itself is in no way a primary source of human-created art. All of the primary source material (the raw human voice vocals, the original samples, etc) are filtered through an electronic medium, and we therefore experience the materials as secondary sources.