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jrcarney52
Reviews
Transcendent Man (2009)
Great documentary about our love/hate relationship with technology
The documentary is, to an extent, a film version of Ray Kurzweil's nonfiction text, *The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology* (2006).
If you're not familiar with Ray Kurzweil's ideas, then I recommend familiarizing yourself with them. I want to go so far as to say he comes closest to articulating the general "mythology" of our time in regards to our relationship with technology.
This was a wonderful documentary to watch before reading his book. It's also interesting because the ambivalent nature of our relationship to technology comes through in an intense way. Indeed, the extremes of "technology-as-savior" and "technology-as-doom" are evident in this documentary. For example, Ray Kurzweil believes that, eventually, machine intelligence and human intelligence will merge together, and that the next stage of human evolution involves our connection to technology: this connection will result in immortality. And yet, other scientists believe that machine intelligence will stay separate from us and, surpassing us in capabilities, intelligence, vision, will come to see us as a mere "insects." Thus, they'll destroy us with as much prejudice as we destroy a nest of wasps or some irritating rabbits.
We have here the vision of either technology as Utopia or technology as Dsytopia: the U.S.S. Enterprise or Skynet.
A lot of the documentary foregrounds Kurzweil's views, but I wouldn't go as far as to say it's biased towards them. A lot of time is spent allowing his detractors to speak. Particularly, Hugo De Garis becomes the representative of the "dark side" of Kurzweil's technological vision. De Garis spends a lot of time talking about the "artilect war," a scenario he has imagined. The artiloect war, according to De Garis, will take place right before machines achieve consciousness. The war will be fought between people who think that intelligent machines should be built and people who believe intelligent machines are our doom and should not be built. We basically have, in De Garis's scenario, a fight between the two visions: those who recoil from technology as the death of humanity and those who embrace technology as the full manifestation of humanity (i.e. our destiny).
There are other vexed issues in terms of our relationship to technology that come through in this documentary, namely, how we are coming to interface with it. One question is, where do the boundaries of the human end? After we have replaced our eyes, our lungs, our brains, our limbs with technological apparatuses, when do we stop being human and start being machines? This is a metaphysical question regarding the fundamental ontological nature of human being as an discrete experience.
A lot of folks are reluctant to watch this documentary because they feel like Kurzweil is "just wrong." I think that's the wrong way of going about it. It doesn't really matter if he's right or wrong. What matters is that such visions are even being expostulated. That a man has written books claiming that technology will save us; that others have written books saying that technology will destroy us: these developments are culturally significant.
They point toward our vexed relationship with technology, the degree to which we both love it. And hate it.
The Gamers: Dorkness Rising (2008)
Juxtaposing Real Life with the Fantastic
What's it about? Well, it's a little complicated to explain if you haven't played tabletop roleplaying games like Dungeons and Dragons. And yet—it's quite easy to explain if you do play roleplaying games. If my description of the plot comes off to you non-RPGers as alienating, don't be turned away! The humor and cleverness of this film is not so "sub- cultural" that you won't find yourself laughing and perhaps touched.
Anyhow. Back to the question at hand. What's it about? It concerns a group of friends who play Dungeons and Dragons together. If you play Dungeons and Dragons, then you know that D&D is a kind of "collaborative storytelling ritual." Thus, the film also relates the story of this group of friends's Dungeons and Dragons "campaign," that is, the story they tell and act out together.
And so you have two narratives here: (1) the story of their real lives, sitting around the game table, laughing, drinking soda, arguing, etc., and (2) the story of their D&D campaign, set in a fantasy world plagued by the evil necromancer Mort Kemnon. So, you have two narratives juxtaposed over top of each other here: a realistic one and a fantasy one. This narrative juxtaposition is the source of much of the pleasure of the film—its humor, its insights into human character, etc.. Let me try to explain.
An example. There's one character, Gary, who has decided to play a sorcerer in the D&D game. And so he plays another character, a sorcerer. And yet, he can't decide on which gender to make his character. And as he's playing, he sometimes forgets his character is a girl. And so, you have a character in the fantasy world, a sorcerer/sorceress, by the name of Luster, played by two actors: Christian Doyle and Jennifer Page. One scene you have a scantily-clad, sexy sorceress; and the next scene you have a dude in excessively feminine sorceress's clothing. What is the result of these complicated narrative swirlings that I'm having difficulty articulating here? Hilarity.
Aside front he plot, you have some very good comedic acting in here. The character of Flynn Fine, the womanizing bard (played by Scott C. Brown), is hilarious. There's a scene where he attempts to use his bard-singing abilities to calm the rage of a marauding band of goblins, and is pin- cushioned with spears. This moved me to tears (tears of laughter, that is). When I watch the film, this scene is a "rewinder-and-play-againer".
The stories of other characters--the game master, Kevin Lodge (Nathan Rice), and the "rules lawyer," Cass (Brian Lewis)—are, in addition to being both hilarious and fun, touching stories. Kevin is struggling with writer's block; Cass is struggling with his need to "win," to be the best, the greatest, the one. There's another character, the fighter Daphne (Carol Roscoe), who is perfect at being the opposite of the stereotypical mighty-thewed warrior: intelligent, sweet, noble, and-- nevertheless--deadly. In a fun way her character shines a lot of light on gender stereotypes.
For being an independent film company, the production value is also quite impressive. Costuming, computer effects, choreography, props, scenery: all of these suggest that this film is indeed an "independent," low-budget production—and yet, the production elements seem to suggest a characteristic style, a unique flavor that is endearing and impressive rather than cheesy.
Anyhow, I love this movie! In juxtaposing "real life" with "fantasy life," it reveals important inter-connections between the two; and it does this difficult work with humor and authenticity in a way only an independent production could.
The Dark Crystal (1982)
The Dark Crystal: Secondary World Fantasy and the Authority of Material Effects
In this film Jim Henson has imagined an entirely new world. Not only does he create new races of beings—the evil Skeksis, the calm Mystics, the persevering Gelflings--he creates in this film a new planet, an entirely new ecosystem, Thra: its the flora, its fauna, its lifeforms.
There's something about the "materiality" of these effects that imbue the film with a kind of authenticity, a kind of authenticity the best CGI couldn't garner.
Jim Henson's new creations—his novums, if you will--are related through artistic puppets and amazing set designs. I want to talk about them all, but I'm going to limit myself to a few highlights.
The villains of the film, the Skeksis, made such an impression on me as a young kid, and still do. Half-buzzard, half insect, beady eyes, decadent clothing: they suggest dark sorcery and decaying empires.
The main villain, the Chamberlain of the dead emperor (his name is skekSil), was my favorite Skeksi. He was one of those villains you loved to hate. He has this strange little verbal tick. In a high pitched voice he moans, "Mmmmmmm,
" which suggests he thinking. He does this throughout the film, and you come to both love and hate it.
There's another character, Aughra, a kind of "Yoda-ish" oracle lady who helps the main character understand his fate. She is of some indeterminate race; but she has these buggy eyes and this crazy hair that always stirred me. And her gravely voice and lyrical dialog gives her a genuine authority.
There's a scene in the film, in Aughra's astrological laboratory, where she's explaining "the Great Conjunction" to the protagonist; and there's this huge model of the many planets and their courses. It's an amazing sculpture! And you have to remind yourself—that's not CGI! Someone built that.
Other parts of the film showcase the artistic power of Jim Henson's studios. There's one scene when the protagonist stumbles upon an ancient ruin of his race, the Gelflings, and there are bas-relief sculptures on a ruined wall depicting their fraught history (spoiler: all the Gelflings, aside from the two main characters, have had their souls sucked out by the Skeksis). The detail here is astounding. All the vegetation, the water running down the stone, the weeds: all of it is "artificial," the artistic creation of a studio.
That's why I think this film is a masterpiece: you immerse yourself in this world and begin to believe in it, and forget that all of those things, those creatures, all of those trees, living plants, natural vistas—they are all artificial creations. Sculptures. Puppets.
In this fantasy film, Jim Henson and company have--as much as anyone can hope to do--created a "secondary world".
The Flight of Dragons (1982)
Touching Fantasy Movie about the Conflict between Science and Myth
Unlike other Rankin and Bass animated movies--The Hobbit and The Last Unicorn--this film isn't based on a single work. It doesn't have a "primary text," if you will, to accurately relate or deviate from. It's based on other works, but it is a mixture of two: (1) the "speculative natural history" book titled Flight of Dragons (1979) by Peter Dickinson, and (2) the novel, The Dragon and the George (1976), by Gordon R. Dickson. I'm not familiar with either of these works (though I wish I was). Needless to say, the narrative of this film is unique and not one that precedes its production.
Some brief plot summary: the film concerns the adventures of a former biology student turned fantasy novelist / fantasy game maker. He creates a very "Dungeons and Dragons" type game and a world to go along with it. And, through some various magical happenings, he gets whisked away to the fantasy world he created. There he finds out that he is the champion of this world. He has to fight an evil necromancer named Ommadon (voiced by James Earl Jones). The story is filled with dragons, elves, rangers, knights, magical spells, fairies, slime worms, dreary taverns, etc..
On the level of plot, it's very thrilling.
But the plot is not the only thing that endears me to this film. Let me just list some of the elements that make it a masterpiece.
The animation style: Rankin and Bass's unique animation style comes through here. Slightly strange, borderline grotesque, the artistic style creates a tension between the real world elements the drawings are derived from and the abstractions the drawings are supposed to represent. Thus, there is a kind of rawness / baseness to it.
The drawings are stylized, for sure, but the nature of the stylization is such that it might even be described as a resistance to stylization. In other words, the artists strived for reality while realizing that reality was beyond the pale of animation. In other animated films, artists seem to abstain from any ambition to "realistically" represent something. And in this way you get the "four-fingered" hands of so much animation / cartoons.
The voice acting: There is some strange voice acting in this film, but it endears me to it. Particularly, the voice actor who plays the voice of the Princess character, Millisande, is quite awkward yet completely satisfying for its mystical, almost recitative quality. Also, the voice actor who relates the character of Smrgol the Dragon—James Gregory—is brilliant! He's an old dragon, tired out by life, and the husky voice no-nonsense delivery completely communicates this. John Ritter does the voice of the main character, Peter Dickinson, and he ramps up the nerdy quality of his voice to the extreme. And, of course, James Earl Jones as the archvillain is just brilliant. He evil laughter is pure art.
The thematic content: For a kid's film, this flick engages with some serious philosophical issues. Ultimately, this film is about the conflict between magic and science, empiricism and emotion, two fundamentally distinct ways of understanding the world. Without giving away too much of the plot, the main character becomes the avatar for reason and logic, science and math; thus, the baddies become the representatives of superstition, magic, fear, and other emotional ways of coming to terms with the world.
Spoiler alert: It's a strange twist, but the main character's quest ultimately preserves "the magical realm," which is an absolute incongruity considering his way of understanding the world necessarily undermines it.
But I forgive this film this as it really begs the question, "Are our imaginations and flights of fancy, our impulses toward wonder and beautiful ignorance necessarily incompatible with the scientific endeavor? Is there something worthwhile is hearing "a god's anger" in the thunder rather than, say, "the manifestation of a meteorological phenomenon?" Is there something lost when we "unweave" the rainbow?
The film doesn't answer this rich question. It's the source of its aesthetic power is that is even raises it.
The Last Unicorn (1982)
Beautiful Film, Great Message: There is More to This Life than Revealed by the Senses
I'm not going to waste time summarizing the classic work this film is based on, Peter S. Beagle's novel of the same name. It appears on many "best works of modern fantasy" lists and is widely considered to be part of the fantasy canon (right next to, say, J.R.R. Tolkien and Ursula K. LeGuin). Suffice it to say this is the story of the last unicorn in the world and her attempt to bring unicorns back.
Let me be clear: this isn't the most "macho" of movies. It's a love story about a unicorn. When I was first introduced to this movie (around 10), I felt slightly reluctant to watch it, pressured as I was to love football, baseball, wrestling, and camping and not Atari. How I got over this feeling, came to love unicorns, is an important part of this review/homage.
I remember: when I first saw The Last Unicorn it was broadcast on television, and I was irritated by how the wizard looked: Schmendrick the Magician had teeny-tiny legs, NO BEARD, and was wearing tights! This disturbed me because as a little kid because I had a very clear idea of what wizards were supposed to look like: long gray beards, pointy hats, robes with stars and moons on them.
As I watched, however, I made this connection, came to terms with the irritation Schmendrick's appearance caused me, and thereby glimpsed the simple yet powerful "message" of the film: "appearances" and are often deceiving.
Sure, you may think a 10 year old is too little to extrapolate "messages" or "lessons" from stories. I beg to differ. I think "sponge- minded" kids are often much more inclined to try to seek out a didactic message or "point," if you will, in the media they consume than us "rock-minded" jaded adults. That being neither here nor there, trust me on this: I got it. The message of the film, that is. That appearances on deceiving.
In spite of the fact that Schmendrick looked like a twerpy sort of guy, he was actually a powerful magician. In spite of the fact that "Lady Amalthea" looked like a beautiful human princess, she was really a unicorn. Consider the entire sequence of Mommy Fortuna's circus. Some summary: this witch lady has all of these animals—a lion, a snake, a monkey—bespelled to look like creatures from mythology. People fall into the trap of her illusion and believe in them. I won't give away a cool part of the film, where one creature—who, like the others, appears to be a creature of mythology—actually is one. But, here we have it again, the message: appearances are deceiving.
Through some twist of thought I applied this lesson to the film and as a little kid I began to happily celebrate unicorns, to doodle them in my notebooks, to draw them shooting lasers out of their eyes.
My logic, though not as elegantly put, went something like this: you, sir, may think unicorns are just for girls. But, sir, they aren't. They're awesome. They're a symbol for how the surface of the world is an illusion. And that there are other things, beyond what we can glimpse with our senses, that are sometimes more and sometimes less fantastical than this life.
In reality it probably went something more like this: I like unicorns, so shove off!
Pretty deep thoughts for a little kid. You can believe it. Or not. But take this story of my first experience with the film as a testimony to its artistic power. It was powerful enough to make a little, self- conscious, asthmatic kid afraid of being called a nerd (who is now quite happy to accept that appellation) come to love unicorns as a kind of protest.
The Hobbit (1977)
A Masterpiece of Animation, Fantasy, and Wonder
This is a great film filled with adventure, excitement, wonder, and, believe it or not, action (it was 1977 and swordfights and stabbing giant spiders was still o.k. for wee folks).
I don't think I need to summarize the widely known plot of The Hobbit, which is very much hewed to by this film. That's perhaps one of the greatest characteristics of this film: its commitment to accurately relating the plot of the novel. I can't think of any glaring revision and only one omission (spoiler: the Beorn episode before Bilbo and the dwarfs enter Mirkwood is left out).
To begin, there's some strange quality about Rankin and Bass's animation style. It has an authenticity, a kind of realism, that other animation styles (say, for example, Disney's style in The Black Cauldron), completely lack. There's a strangeness to the way certain things are drawn. For example, the wood elves. Their legs are really long. They have green skin. Their features are inhuman: wide cheek-bones, flat brows. In juxtaposition to the humans that appear in this film, they look completely different; indeed, they look like a completely different species.
The voice acting, too, is wonderful. John Huston as the voice of Gandalf is absolutely amazing. His smoky, intense voice relates a sense of wisdom and knowledge of other worlds. There's a kind of tone to his expression, a steadiness that makes it seem as if he is reciting his dialog or expressing an incantation as opposed to merely speaking. Usually this would probably be chalked up to bad voice acting, hewing too closely to "reading the script" as opposed to "acting the script". But, for Gandalf, it truly works.
Other memorable voices are Brother Theodore's voice for Gollum. Brother Theodore shows up in a lot of Rankin and Bass's productions. His strained, high accented voice, sounds exotic and otherworldly. And his screaming of, "Baggins! We hates it! Forever!" kind of creeped me out as a kid. I remember him as the assistant, Ruhk, to Mommy Fortuna in Rankin and Bass's famous adaptation of Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn.
The music is worth mentioning. It has a very "1970s folk musicy" feel to it that I love. Many of the songs are adaptations of songs written by Tolkien (lyrics only, of course); and to this day, when I'm reading through The Hobbit, I read the lyrics with those melodies in mind.
A more subtle characteristic endears me to this film: its color palette. I don't know if it's just my old VHS, but there is a subdued quality to the film's color palette. The range of colors is softer, more natural, than, say, the intense variety of a Disney film, even an early one like Snow White. I'm not going to try and explain why, but I prefer this subdued color palette. It truly creates a wonderful effect. An important character in The Hobbit is the wildland itself; and when the large natural vistas are portrayed—forests, river valleys, the desolation of Smaug—their coloring and the fine detail of their rendering makes them feel authentic.
The best compliment I can make of this film is that my wife and I, both adults, fall asleep to this film whenever we've had a stressful day. It's an enduring source of comfort, a true "safety-blanket" of a movie, that, through some strange alchemy of the right style of animation, the right voice actors, and the right music, truly stirs in me a sense of wonder.
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
Conan the Barbarian: Film Sword and Sorcery at its Best
The epic cinematography, the low-tech special effects, the beautiful sets, and the well-paced narrative make this film brilliant. Based upon the character created by Robert E. Howard--quite possibly the greatest pulp fiction writer in the 30s--the movie recreates the nihilistic and hopeless aesthetic the writer's stories and the Sword-and-Sorcery--are so famous for. In the world of Sword and Sorcery and Conan, the Gods are indifferent, and often sadistic. They laugh at our tribulations, and think no less of gobbling up a mortal than we do of slaughtering a head of cattle. Although life is short and terrible in Conan's world, the noble and powerful still insist on living it.
John Milius and Oliver Stone's screenplay as well as Milius's directing rendition capture the feeling of timelessness and hopelessness of the genre. Mako, the actor who plays the strange coast-wizard and narrator, has a wonderful voice for the genre, and it matches perfectly with the screenplay composed by Basil Poledouris. James Earl Jones's creates an intriguing, mythic, and unique character out of the cult-leader Thulsa Doom. No actor has made silence more emotive than Schwarzenegger does in this film. The entire cast and production team seemed to be a rare and happy miracle.
I remember being a little kid, probably in 89, listening to the beginning drumbeats of the theme song, and then hearing, "Between the time the ocean drank Atlantis and the rise of the Sons of Aryas..." and literally having the hair on the back of my neck stand up. There are numerous great lines, particularly Conan's answer to the question, "What is good in life?": "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women. " And the dialog in general, married with the strategically utilized silences, force the viewer to reflect on the iconic shots: Conan, sitting over a fire eating meat with a friend; Conan, meditating on the death of Thulsa Doom; Conan, trudging onward on the wheel of pain.
Today my appreciation of the movie comes from the extent to which it truly recreates the aesthetic and feeling of the Sword and Sorcery genre, and also the raw and immediate power of low-tech special effects over today's--I sound like an old man--flashy computer graphics. Sure, when Conan hacks off Thulsa Doom's head and tosses it down the steps of the Mountain of Power, the bloody prop looks kind of fake. But it initiates my imagination in a way CGI never will be able to.