High Holy Mass of Contradictions

The premise for this film excited me; at first glance, I even thought it might have been a Charlie Kaufman screenplay. (No, turns out it's by a first-time screenwriter. Inspired by Charlie Kaufman, perhaps?) The trailer reassured me that there was hope for an original story and an enjoyable movie experience. I commented that the trap to avoid here would be the "hero discovers how meaningless his life is and undergoes a transformation into a new, more interesting person" cliche; if the filmmakers could avoid that and give us some original character development, we might just have a great film.

I'm disappointed to report that they did not avoid that trap. True, the transformation wasn't quite as over-the-top as it is in some films, but it did rely heavily on ever-greater interaction with the love interest, a more casual wardrobe, a hip song performance, and a handful of other overused vehicles that scream "Look at me! I'm a character with an ARC!"

Beyond that, the characters lacked the kind of likeability it usually takes to rally the audience behind their development anyway. When the success of a story hinges on the audience caring about whether the hero lives or dies, the audience had better want him to live. Instead, I felt resigned to the idea that he might die and idly interested in what might happen next. In other words, the filmmakers never really reached me.

The dryness of the humor, the attempts at stylish special effects, the offbeat nature of the story, the pacing of it all -- these are all hallmarks of films I love and should have been an easy "in" for the filmmakers with a viewer like me. Instead, I found myself bored by the cloying attempts to merely imitate great films rather than to invent something truly new and original.

For example, the side plot involving Emma Thompson as the novelist and Queen Latifah as her seen-it-all assistant sent by the publisher was as tired as it was tiresome. Emma Thompson was, as usual, more than competent in her role, but to what end? Even she couldn't elevate the quality of this effort.

And however refreshing it should have been to see Will Ferrell take on a role with more substance than he had to work with in, say, Anchorman or Bewitched, the material here too often gave him miserably little to work with. The audience is left watching Ferrell brush his teeth while we have the nagging sense it's supposed to be funny.

It should be noted that I saw this film in a theater that must have been full of forgiving Ferrell fans, because there were titters at many of these awkward, un-funny, mundane scenes. If you're a diehard Ferrell fan, maybe it's worth the price of admission to laugh at Ferrell as he ties his necktie and brushes his teeth. If you're a more casual fan of Ferrell's, you might want to wait and rent this one. And if you're Ferrell-ambivalent, give this a miss.

- as contributed to Amazon (2 stars out of 5) and IMDb (5 stars out of 10)
(Yes, I know 2 out of 5 and 5 out of 10 doesn't make much sense. But such is the logic of rating on different scales. We used to go round and round on what constituted the most sensible ratings scale when I worked at Netflix and we would debate allowing users to rate with half-stars. Case in point: 3 out of 5 feels too generous, but 4 out of 10 feels too harsh.)

Side note: parts of the film are shot on location at University of Illinois at Chicago, my alma mater. That was weird, mostly because they were clearly using the buildings for their harsh architectural feel to add visual tension. (What else would you expect from "Brutalist" architecture?) I worked for years in a building very similar to the one they shot in (when I worked at and later ran the Language Lab). It's odd to see your old school / workplace used in that way.

Update: Roger Ebert disagrees with me, but that's no surprise. Although I deeply respect his opinion and his work, I think he's being too generous in his assessment. He's not wrong in the points he makes about the film, but those points just don't add up, and he's doing the math as if they do.

(Oh, also, he does reference the location, saying the director often chose "spare and cold Mies van der Rohe buildings." The UIC buildings weren't Mies van der Rohe, but maybe some of the other locations were.)

Mostly, I think the screenplay could have used another edit. It could have been a really cool movie if it had been made better.

And this is just the CMAs!




I have no idea what Faith was saying before the winner was announced, although some theories are that she was saying "I better fucking win." But there's no denying that she said "WHAT?!" when the winner was announced.

Update: Faith Hill and her manager are both claiming that she was making a joke and that she didn't know she was on camera.

As for the joke: yes, Faith is known as a bit of a jokester, but really, this is a big misstep. For someone who's been in the entertainment business as long as she has, she has to know that #1) perception is everything, and #2) awards ceremonies draw hyper-attention from the kind of casual crowds who have no insight into the personalities of the people involved. As such, most viewers were bound to perceive her reaction as a freakout and, well, see #1.

As for the camera: what human who's ever seen even one awards show doesn't realize that nominees are onscreen while winners are being announced? Not only that, but since she was on camera, that implies that she was standing right in front of a camera. I give her intelligence more credit than to buy that excuse.

In all fairness to Faith, it does seem a little odd that someone who clearly modeled herself after Faith took the award. Moreover, Carrie's performance earlier in the evening was definitely not award-worthy. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but it's rather apparent that Joe Galante has a vested interest in the promotion and success of Carrie Underwood, based solely on the number of photo ops he's posed for with her. A man as powerful as he is could certainly (directly or indirectly) influence block voting and sway a number of groups.

The funniest part of the whole thing, to me, is that a number of my coworkers were at the ceremony and had no idea about any of it until they came into the office this morning and heard it from those of us who watched it on TV or read about it from a liveblogging source. It's probably some consolation to those of us who didn't get to revel in all the glamour that staying home may have been more fun.

Anyway, I wonder what the fallout will be with Faith's fan base.

I'm home sick today. I was at work sick yesterday, and I think I pushed it a little too hard, so I'm paying the price now with a swollen, sore throat.

The good news is, though, I have plenty to do. Sure there's work I could be doing, but check this out:



That's a helluva lot of reading to do.

I'm certainly not trying to one-up anyone, but I was inspired to do this by Brittney at Sparkwood & 21 when she pointed out that after 3 1/2 days of vacation from her regular gig at Nashville Is Talking, she had nearly 1000 unread messages in her news reader. My 2000 is about a day's worth, and I even spent a good hour or two reading last night.

The key difference is this: she probably reads most, if not all, of the blogs she has feeds for on a regular basis. I read a much smaller subset of them and then mark everything else as read. What I do read on a regular basis are the local blogs (and there are 56 new messages since last night), flickr comments and photo updates from friends and contacts (9 new updates since last night), local news (10 new updates since last night), and a smattering of the hundreds of other blogs and media news feeds I subscribe to for variety, such as Gawker, Gizmodo, Boing Boing, and so on. And there are 1965 new items in that grouping since last night. And so much of that is going to be repeated news (how many times can I stand to read about Madonna and her new shiny new Malawian kid?) that it's going to be tedious to plow through them all. But how else are you going to find that occasional hidden gem? The social bookmarking sites (Digg, del.icio.us, etc) haven't really come through for me with the stuff I tend to be interested in (which is not Madge and whether or not her adoptions are crooked).

What about you? What do you read regularly vs. occasionally?

I find this very interesting: according to a story at netribution, Anne Sweeney, the co-chair of Disney's board, has recognized piracy as a "business model" to be competed with, deviating from the entertainment industry's usual approach which has been to classify it as tantamount to theft.

"We understand now that piracy is a business model," said Sweeney, twice voted Hollywood's most powerful woman by the Hollywood Reporter. "It exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do - through quality, price and availability. We we don't like the model but we realise it's competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward."

HT: Boing Boing