2012 gave me a Panic Attack

If Roland Emmerich is your movie God, pray not to be marginal or ordinary. Joe the plumber and his ilk are the first to suffer several million terrible deaths in this inexcusable waste of money. The end of earth as a world and culture unifying event? Only in Roland’s mind. If you aren’t a cog in his story-telling machine, you are as good as dead.

With “2012,” Roland “Independence Day” Emmerich has made the most violent film of all time. For almost three hours, the end of human civilization is arbitrarily and graphically depicted. There are no bloody deaths, such realism has no place in a film made by a man who alleged in his previous movie that mammoths, humans, pyramids, and ships all existed at the same time twelve thousand years ago. There is the motif of people being hit with tidal waves and looking peacefully at the camera right before their watery deaths (as was the case more than FIVE times in this stupid movie) continuing. The acceptance of a terrible death by these characters, many of who are major, is an extremely annoying occurrence. This goes back to Emmerich’s God complex: characters die this supposed “merciful” death if Emmerich considers them important, if not, a horrific death awaits. Major characters are ground up in gears and shown graphically and pointlessly drowning.

Emmerich’s latest begins during 2009, when scientists discover that the tectonic plates that make up the earth’s crust (I think) are shifting and behaving erratically, forecasting disaster for humanity everywhere in a few short years. The governments of the world keep this a secret, hoping to use the projected time wisely to prepare for humanity’s survival. However, it soon becomes apparent that even the best predictions are inaccurate, and that humankind is generally screwed. Before a single effects-driven event, we also learn that the wealthy private sector was given the right to buy space on massive “arks,” which are later revealed to be foolish-looking cruise ship-submarine hybrids.

The film follows several characters. There is the main scientist/White House staff member played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is morally conflicted from the beginning about his government’s action yet does nothing really to prevent anything or warn anyone, except his cruise-ship performer father. Danny Glover plays the president of the United States, and Thandie Newton plays his daughter. There is John Cusack as Jackson Curtis, a limo driver/science-fiction author, and Amanda Peet as his ex-wife. The film uses Mr. Cusack’s character as the one the audience is supposed to follow and identify with the most, similar to numerous Emmerich hero-fathers of past films. The main problem with “2012”’s characters are that they are not in fact characters. Everyone in this film is a cog in a machine, with Emmerich’s God-complex soaring to new heights as he plays evil puppet master, sparing people and condemning them with the most arbitrary nature. No character has anything resembling a personality, and the excuse that this is an effects-driven action film is no excuse, even Emmerich’s own past films had great characters without sacrificing the spectacle.

As the film moves on, so to do its characters, trotting the globe most inexplicably given the fact that fuel and resources are now mostly underwater. When our heroes, lead by Jackson Curtis, arrive in China or wherever the arks are being launched from, the passengers and potential survivors of the events of 2012 are revealed to be, not surprisingly, a very homogenous bunch, with the future looking mighty like something Adolph Hitler would’ve imagined. This should be the final insult of the film, but there are still thirty long minutes to go. With its oppressive run-time, shoulder-shrugging approach to the death of millions, and ridiculous happy-and-ambiguous-at-the-same-time ending, “2012” has managed to do the impossible and unseat “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” as the worst film of 2009.

Film Grade: F

Non Combatant

I am not a fighter by nature, in any sense of the word. I stand up for myself, but actual fighting eludes me as a solution to many of my day to day situations. There are things that I believe to be worth fighting for, and fighting against. I'm not talking about other people or their ideas, that scope is far too narrow to include anything I take arms against. I strike against sloth and apathy, in myself. I wage war for cleanliness and comfort. I take pause from any battle for a good-tasting meal. 

Recently I have come into combat with bad films. After a string of articles dishing out the merits of films of a lesser importance, I decided to become a combatant against lousy cinema for a time. This did not mean delving into the stereotypical pool of "classics" that, as my Uncle would put it, "high-minded cineasts" would put forth. I went in to my own backlog of films I had never watched. Impulse buys, thefts, and gifts were all piled up, numbering at least fifty, and I needed to make a dent. So I pulled out a few, and watched.

I started with "The Friends of Eddie Coyle," a meditation on "snitching" amongst criminals, ranging from low to higher ranking. The film followed, arguably more than its title rat, a team of bank robbers, an amateur gun-runner aiming for the big time, and an old, low-level gun broker. The gun broker is the titular Eddie Coyle, who is looking at 3 to five up north (In New Hampshire, Coyle is located in Boston.) Eddie, and most of the film's other criminals, all have a relationship of information-trading with a cop, Foley, and it is this cop Coyle goes to in order to try and get his sentence reduced, for being friends with "Uncle." We meet and see more of Coyle's potential targets for giving up than Coyle himself. Coyle's problems are shown to us in single scenes; one scene at home with the wife and kids, a few with the small-time gun runner, a few with Foley, and a few with fellow rat Dillon, played by Peter Boyle. This makes viewers feel as though they know Coyle intimately, we know him well with only a few scenes. The film is fun to watch, understated in story, with very good visuals. It is a rewarding world of thieves to get sucked into for an hour and forty minutes.

Next was "The Conversation," Frances Ford Coppala's 1974 film starring Gene Hackman. It is a simple-seeming story of a wiretapper, a professional, detached, bugger, Harry Caul, who gets involved in a conversation he tapes, embarking on a hazy, trippy dangerous journey to the truth. A couple may be hurt if Harry hands over his recordings, and this possibility unnerves him to the breaking point. The film is like a horror movie, with garbled audio serving to scare, and dehumanize characters. Hackman plays the main character, who has about 90% screen time, as a private man who carries nothing personal with him. Harry Caul is awakened from this life when he realizes the impact of the consequences of his personal involvement; audio turns to human voices for him. The film that follows this sudden change plummets Harry into a feverish nightmare of truth-seeking, and the result he found blew his mind, and mine as well.

Next in line was "The Road," in theatres. This film was reasonably mind-blowing. The vision of apocalypse unleashed on viewers should scare anyone; this is where we are headed and what we will become when we get there. The fact that the story, of father and son struggling to reach the coast in false hopes of life being easier there, moves relatively slow serves the film's purpose: one should be distracted by observing every inch of the screen, which is packed with the grim, pathetic, whispering decay of the world. The father and son are secondary, functioning as human diving bells for the viewer, entry into this world of cold and gray and lifelessness. The film wrapped me up completely, and didn't let go once.

Combat against unworthy cinema is a necessary precaution, but bad cinema must be tolerated. It is often humorous to watch, humorous to write about, and humorous to read about. It is humorous to discuss. For any of those humorous things to occur, bad cinema must also be tolerated. Besides, "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" will always be seen by an audience manyfold larger than that of "The Road," way of the world. But as long as bad cinema has an intangible way of upping the quality of my own life, I will continue to, and be happy to, wage an endless war against it, forever going back and forth between non-combatant and combatant.

Before My Eyes

I can understand why posts I've written would lead readers (Ha!) to believe that all I do is sit around watching defunct television shows. But two nights ago I went into the city to spend the night carousing and drinking, which is the first other activity of mine I will hint at on this blog.

I was a little lightheaded driving into town down I-95, I was getting lost in Dinosaur Jr.'s new album 'Farm,' particularly the song Plans. It was excellent but the subject matter, of break-ups and broken hearts, was hitting a little close to home. I arrived in town unsure of myself, not in the least because my chosen attire was an orange vintage Philadelphia Flyers jacket. I met up with my friend and we proceeded to walk about town, the entire time with me half in the conversations taking place. 

It was about 15th and Walnut when I thought I saw a high school friend of mine walking ahead. I was so out of it that I wandered straight into the street, apparently. I'm going to have to take the witness's word for it, because I wasn't paying attention at all. The car that nearly hit me was a silver GMC Envoy, or possibly a Pathfinder Armada, with tinted windows. The window rolls down, and I'm staring at the hardest looking dude I've ever seen, and he gives me the most serious "Are you shitting me? I know you're shitting me" face, while I stumble over explanations as to what made me walk out into the middle of the street against traffic, which I myself am unsure of. 

After my companion explained to me what exactly happened, I was overcome with a fit of the shakes and the sweats, even though I never knew I was in any real danger. I spent the rest of the night thinking, "What if I'm dead and I just don't know it?" I'm still thinking that.

Moderation

It has come to my attention that anyone who reads this would have reason to believe that all I do is sit around and watch irrelevant television shows.

That sentence was too long. 

Problem is, I know that isn't true, but I have an immense amount of trouble defending that truth, the truth that is the opposite of the previous conjecture. The one about me.

I haven't been running lately, that's the reason I'm sort off kilter. I'm going to run tomorrow. Thing is, I've been working out my glamour muscles. That is a reference to the last episode of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia," in which Corey from "That 80's Show" accuses Mac of "Only working out [his] glamour muscles." I've been doing that, and believe me, this is not a vain comment. If anything, I have low self-esteem, I'm not trying to inflate my own ego here. Thing is, I've only been working out to the end of improving this muscle group. The fucking title of this thing includes the term "run," I feel like I should get back to it. I'm going to do it tomorrow, whenever I can. As long as it's before 6PM.

What color is my Piss going to be tomorrow?

Carnivale has my favorite style of character division. Since the show is composed of two parallel story lines, the cast of characters is roughly divided in half, as I like to refer to it the Nick Stahl half and the Clancy Brown half. This also means that the run time of the show is also halved, which is perfect for impatient people like me.

Nick Stahl is the reason I started watching Carnivale. I was riding high of my viewing of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, which starred Mr Stahl as John Connor. The first adds for Canivale, the Season 1 package cover, hit the streets almost simultaneously, and my interest was piqued. It took until the 2004 DVD release, a Christmas present, for me to see a second of the show, but until then I followed it loosely via reviews, primarily those published in Entertainment Weekly (I mention this so that those reading know that I was not overcome by fits of research prior to asking for a sight-unseen television box set for a Christmas present.) I viewed the entire first season and then shelved the show, relatively underwhelmed. This let down feeling also went along with season 2, which I was watching on air concurrently in January 2005. The best thing I can say about what that did for me was get me into Deadwood, which was re-running the first season at the time. These episodes would lead me to my favorite show of all time, Deadwood. I did however drop out of viewing Carnivale season 2 around the fourth episode, so the first ever show I watched on HBO was officially discarded. During a what would become to be routine home invasion in 2006, the set was stolen. and I never gave the show a thought after that.

I proceeded to do something odd for my birthday in 2007. I had asked for Season 2 of Carnivale on a whim, got it, and then asked for a Season 1 replacement Christmas. I re-watched Season 1 over January 2008, but inexplicably stopped 11 episodes in when my mother retired that same month around that same time. 

Today I had cause to open the show up again. After some Rome viewings a few days back, I decided that my Winter should be made up of finishing my cancelled HBO shows, namely, Deadwood and Carnivale. SInce Carnivale is a show only I am into in this household, I am using my time during the day to consume the mythology choked show. Like I said earlier, the show is divided into two halves. The Nick Stahl half does battle against the Clancy Brown half. Nick Stahl plays an isolated southwest kid whom we meet burying his mother. A bulldozer driven by the bank destroys his home, and a traveling Carnival takes him on as help. We meet Clancy Brown, a pious minister who begins to be tormented by his past and his own internal demon. Over the course of season 1, it becomes apparent that a battle between these two men who have never met is imminent, with the Nick Stahl, or Ben Hawkins, as good and Clancy Brown, or Brother Justin Crowe, as evil. It also becomes clear that the man who runs the Carnival had the same relationship with Ben's father, the elusive Henry Scudder. Set against the biblical backdrop of the 1930s dust bowl, Carnivale is as cryptic as they come but lent an air of urgency via setting and the music, which sounds lifted from the horror genre, with a touch of religious grandeur added to give a certain weight to it. 

I found episodes eleven and twelve of season 1 very rewarding, and now plan on diving head-first into the second, final season. I seem to always be doing this, getting into shows that I know full well end too soon. I wonder what that says about me psychologically, a question I plan to leave to the professionals. It does show, evident to anyone, that the premium cable networks need to give their shows more of a chance.

Kalends of February

HBO always does the same thing to me. Right when a series gets either interesting or great, they cancel it. Deadwood, one of the best Westerns ever, canceled. This was the worst for me, because the tease promise of two 120 minute movies were constantly being promised. I have made my peace with that, still sitting on the third, final season, waiting for the coming winter to experience it. Carnivale was another one, with one of the most hair-pulling cliffhanger endings ever shown.  

The toss-up is Rome. Conceived and executed as a historical look at Rome right around the fall of the senate, the first season sped through Caesar's rise and fall as Rome's first dictatorial ruler. AFter the season ended, rumblings about ballooning costs and ridiculously extreme sets gave way to HBO's announcement that season 2 would be the shows last. This gave way to ten episodes that barreled through the rise of Octavian and fall of Mark Antony. The second season moves at a cranked up pace, covering the rise and fall of numerous characters that could have provided the show's Wire-like sprawling cast with deadly loose ends. Normally, such a rush works to a show's disadvantage. The pressures of ending plotlines can lead to a massive decline in creativity and depth. This did not occur on Rome, the timeframe was larger but the pacing remained the same, choosing to jump time periods rather than an abridged view of them all strung together.

There are flaws as well. The casting switch of Octavian was necessary but poorly executed. An occasional battle is skipped, but this is understandable as the battle between Cassius and Brutus against Octavian and Mark Antony is epic. There was really no need to splurge on another battle scene that large a scale within ten episodes. The conclusion shall not be spoken of here by me, suffice to say it ties together in a very satisfying way.

My point is, C'mon HBO. Let your shows breath.

Bleak Master

I'm about to watch the final episode of Showtime's "Brotherhood." The series ran 29 episodes from 2006 to 2008.

I got into it on a whim, a foolish impulse buy while I was a sophomore in college. I watched an hour or two, and gave up on it. I had reason to come back to it in a fit of minor depression, and ended up watching the first season in two days.

The show revolves around two Providence, RI brothers, Michael and Tommy Caffee. Michael is a gangster with psychotic tendencies that always come out in misguided attempts at justice. He has not been seen in Providence for seven years. Tommy is a politician, a state rep prone to corruption. The first hour begins with Michael Caffee reappearing in Providence after a mob soldier with a hit out on Michael is beaten to death at a construction sight. From there, "Brotherhood" tells the following story of the Caffee family, and all of those with the bad luck of being involved with them.

The third season, billed as its final, recently came out, and I've been sure to consume them slowly. The first season was fast and angry, the second slow to an extreme and bleak. Season three is a different sort, eight hours running almost as a mini-series, bound to the other two seasons in terms of plot and character, but containing its own story, begun and concluded within. I am on the cusp now of finding out how it all ends up for the Caffee brothers.