Monday February 9 2009 Movies

Good times never seemed so good

buttons.jpgFor some reason (probably because I was conflating it with Stardust), I didn’t expect Coraline to make a big dent in the box office. I thought it was going to be one of those relatively low-key indie movies where fans go on for years about how ingenious it was and complain that “most Americans” just didn’t get it.

So I didn’t bother to buy tickets in advance, and I was surprised to get to the theater and find every showing sold out, with lines stretching through the building trying to get in. Which is great, because any time imagination and pure craftsmanship gets rewarded is a good thing. (And because I did manage to get in to see the movie, in Emeryville).

The reviews have been pretty positive, and not only do I disagree with the negative ones, I think they’re doing people a real disservice. A common theme is that the movie is “too scary for little children,” which is both missing the point since the movie’s already rated PG, and also typifies the common Reviewer Arrogance of making assumptions about what other people are going to like. In the case of a “kids’ movie” (which this shouldn’t be labeled as, anyway), it’s particularly ridiculous — who in their 30s outside of a videogame company could’ve predicted that stuff like “Naruto” and Yu-gi-oh and even Pokemon would be so huge?

And of course, it misses the point that kids are both more and less resilient than an adult can predict or remember. When I was the Coraline-viewing age (I’m estimating around 8 or 9 is the youngest age you’d be able to really appreciate the movie), some of the most benign stuff left me scared witless, and other stuff I took with no problem. Misguided coddling of kids doesn’t do anything but raise a generation of the naive and easily offended. The movie’s got its dark moments, to be sure, but it’s in the tradition of Roald Dahl (which I’m pretty confident is intentional).

Seeing it in 3D is definitely the way to go. It’s not the gimmick you might expect; it really does add a feeling of depth to the whole thing that’s perfect for stop-motion animation. Seeing Coraline discover a tunnel to the other world is one of the strongest images in the entire movie, and watching it expand away from you in 3D gives it the feeling of a cross between the opening of a Warner Brothers cartoon and Vertigo that’s just fantastic.

It also gives the whole movie the feeling of a View-Master reel brought to life. Which is a big part of what I liked so much about Coraline: it literally feels like an “instant classic.” It has so many scenes and ideas that are vaguely reminiscent of stories and movies from your childhood, combined with things that insist that it’s contemporary (the VW Beetle enshrouded in fog is another inexplicably memorable image). Its greatest achievement is that it feels like it’s drawing from a well of greater memory — there are so many allusions to other fairy tales and children’s stories, without its ever feeling like just a rehash or survey or re-interpretation. It’s its own thing, and you’re not likely to forget it.

So congrats to Graham and everybody else who worked on the movie; I think it’s going to be one of those rare examples of art that sticks with the audience for the rest of their lives.

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Saturday February 7 2009 Battlestar Galactica

Redemption

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Last week, I complained that it was clear “Battlestar Galactica” had done me wrong, because they put out a very good episode that I couldn’t enjoy because there were still just too many problems with the series as a whole.

This week’s episode (“Blood on the Scales”) was even better. It started with a space battle and the aftermath of a grenade, and rode on that momentum for the next 45 minutes, barely letting up. It was so well-done, in fact, that it forced me to face facts: I’m not going to make it to the end of the series unless I stop expecting the show to play by my rules. I had to hit the Zen of BSG (also known as The Serenity of A Writers’ Room That’s Painted Itself Into a Corner), and just take it for what it is: an hour of drama and tension a week. And, it should be repeated, Mary McDonnell, who’s consistently good.

Back when “The X-Files” was good, I’d get annoyed at people on the internets who’d complain about its continuity errors. (Same for comic books). I figured if they could make an outstanding hour of TV using these characters, then what’s the big deal if they don’t all fit together neatly? Now that’s coming back to haunt me.

I still say that BSG set a pretty high bar for itself: beginning every episode with the reminder that the Cylons did have a plan, reminding us of the fleet population, giving us allegedly symbolic Last Supper photos to ponder, and packing every episode full of prophecies and portents and promises of great things to come. But now that I’ve realized I’m not really attached to any of the characters, and that the big stuff they’ve been building to is almost certainly going to disappoint, I can just sit back and watch the explosions, executions, and arguments. And this one delivered. Mostly.
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Saturday February 7 2009 Disney

There's so much that we share that it's time we're aware

it's a small world
So there’s a good bit o’ hoopla on the internet (at least among those of us who follow this sort of thing) about Disney’s changes to the “it’s a small world” ride at Disneyland. In brief: characters from popular Disney and Pixar movies have been inserted into their “home” countries, bits of Disney theme songs have been inserted into the soundtrack, and a new “America” section has been added.

First, back up a step, for something disclaimerish: Pretty much every genre of thing you can imagine has its own brand of obsessive fandom, but Disney’s in its own weird territory. There are people right this moment in the darkened comic book corners of the web, going into nerdrage over the developments of Final Crisis or whatever, but comic books are always going to be a relatively tiny subset of the population. Not so with Disney: they’re making stuff that has to appeal to millions of people, from the people who drop in for a weekend for the first time in 30 years, to the people who go to every ride and take obsessive pictures of peeling paint in the ride queues to post on their “What Would Walt Think?” blogs.

I’m definitely on the nerdy Disney fan end of the spectrum, but not quite enough to go into a sputtering rage over anything the company does. Except for the Tiki Room renovation in Florida. Whoever was in charge of that pissed on my childhood and should suffer for it.

So back to the “it’s a small world” (note my use of the preferred capitalization, a reminder of my Disney nerd status). A tribute to UNICEF, created for the World’s Fair, and Disney marketing suits are coming in and trashing it with crass merchandising possibilities. What a horrible insult to Disney and Mary Blair’s art and character design!

That’s the story you’re being told, anyway. If you look at pictures of the actual characters, though, it’s a little different. I’d had an image of Disney suits sweeping through the windows of the stores on Main Street and taking the character models out, then cramming them clumsily into a classic ride. (For an example: see the Tiki Room renovation in Florida). But the characters in those photos are done in exactly the same style of the “it’s a small world” characters that have been there for decades. If it hadn’t been picked up by the AP and spread throughout the internet by indignant Disney fans, I might’ve assumed that Alice & the White Rabbit had always been there, and I just never noticed.

So to make it clear: this is in fact a terrible, terrible idea. The people complaining have a point: the ride wasn’t intended to be about Disney characters, it had its own “world” and its own theme. Over the years, the company has managed to chip away at every “original IP” attraction that’s unique to the parks — the Swiss Family Treehouse, the Country Bears, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean — and insert Disney characters, turning the parks into a big homogenized — but synergistic! — mess. The quotes from Disney reps about how “Walt always wanted the park to never be finished” seem like a total cop-out in this instance. They could’ve revamped the ride, added a section that was true to its theme, anything to refresh it and make it feel new. There would’ve been complaints (because everything DIsney does gets complaints), but they would’ve been unjustified. Adding existing characters isn’t new or fresh or imaginative, however. It’s the opposite of new.

But. If they had to do it, it looks like the best job they could’ve possibly done. Based on the photos, it seems much less intrusive than the addition of movie characters to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and that ride suffered from the changes but wasn’t ruined by them.

So the question is: did they have to do it? Probably not. It’s not going to add riders, since they people who ride “it’s a small world” are going to ride it no matter whether Aladdin’s in there or not. Are they going to buy Aladdin or any of its direct-to-DVD sequels after seeing him in the ride? Probably not.

But consider this: so many people have complained about the theme song, and complained about hating the ride, and how grown-ups don’t enjoy going on it, that an eighteen-year-old attraction in Disney parks have parodied “it’s a small world.” If the ride now has an activity that parents can do with their kids, pointing out the characters they already recognize, is that the death of Disneyland as we know it?

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Sunday February 1 2009 Personal

Revolting Developments

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I was going to make some kind of comment to the effect that the reason the Colonials on “Battlestar Galactica” need Cylon technology so much is to enable all their faster-than-light jumps over sharks. But I thought better of it, partly because “jumping the shark” is such a tired expression now, but also because “twirling the jacket” is a much stronger image for me, at least where BSG is concerned.

I’ve pretty much narrowed it down to that moment where the show lost me for good. Because Apollo jumping on a table and twirling his jacket in the air was such a corny moment (not to mention being Tom Cruise-style creepy), and it was so prolonged that I knew exactly what was going to happen next. I guess other potential phrases could be “putting Baltar on the Base Star,” “blowing up Starbuck,” “shooting the leg off Gaeta,” or “bringing back the President’s cancer.” (It’s just coincidental that all these phrases are also excellent euphemisms for wanking).

Whatever the exact moment, I can tell I’ve left the flock because this week’s episode (“The Oath”) would’ve been an excellent episode, taken out of context. There was a strong through-line and strong motivation for the characters. Plenty of action without losing individual interactions. All the major characters brought together, each one given a chance to say what he’s doing and why he’s doing it. Tie-ins to previous episodes to put all in context.

Okay, maybe the last bit is the problem. Because I kept getting annoyed at what should’ve been a cool episode, and it’s because so much of it doesn’t make sense if you’ve been watching the show for four years (or two and a half for those of us who came in late).

One of the strengths of the series has always been that stuff happens: they prided themselves on making big changes to characters and their relationships, instead of having everything reset at the end of every episode. That’s fine for drama, but lousy for continuity. And I don’t mean nerdrage continuity issues like “Seelix claims she was rejected by Anders but we clearly saw in episode 314 that she was hitting on Apollo.” I mean motivations that come out of nowhere for the sake of convenience.

A character speaks for the audience in this episode when he tells Starbuck “nobody even knows what you are anymore.” Ostensibly, that’s a comment about how she came back from the dead, but it could just as well be a comment about how her personality changes completely from week to week. The episode is full of unintentional (I’m hoping) meta-commentary like that.

Hey Apollo, remember that trial? Hey Helo, remember the Pegasus, and that time you betrayed the entire fleet and nothing happened? Remember how we had a big moral quandary about planting a virus in the Cylons’ hub, but had no problem destroying the Resurrection Ship? The series is ending, so they’ve got to tie it in together, but that kind of falls apart when the only thing holding the show together is that without a wiki, people tend to forget what happens from one episode to the next. It doesn’t feel like they’re commenting on the characters’ decisions, but on the writers’.

And I don’t know; maybe it’s the intention of the writers that Apollo is supposed to be the most insufferably annoying character on the show, but having him stop in the middle of a desperate firefight and tell Tigh, “You know, maybe the revolutionaries have a point, what with you being a Cylon and all” was ludicrous almost to coat-twirling levels. Meanwhile, everyone is conveniently ignoring the fact that the Cylons are indistinguishable from humans and that they found a planet thought only to be a myth and they found 2000-year-old bones of Cylons on the planet. These would be interesting things to pursue.

It’s disappointing, because for a while, BSG was the most successful and accessible example of “world-building” I’d ever seen on TV. There was a real mythology and history to these characters. It was a little too self-satisfied with its “edginess,” but more than made up for it by delivering mature stories without devolving into “Star Trek”‘s schmaltz or overly-obvious analogies. Now, it just seems like a bunch of people in a writer’s room trying desperately to tie up as many loose ends as they can, spending more time trying to make 45 minutes of drama than something you have to put genuine thought into. I can see a future of half-Cylon babies and madmen with guns screaming, “Can’t you see? She’s half-black, and I’m half-white!!!”

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