Guardians of the Galaxy is a thrilling, hilarious, bold, and utterly unique movie that I can't possibly recommend enough. It's the first big new addition of characters to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in 3 years since Captain America: The First Avenger put the last piece of the foundation in place for the absolutely amazing Joss Whedon triumph The Avengers. It's also the most oddball story of the bunch, prominently containing as it does such characters as a talking Raccoon named Rocket (literally named after the Beatles' song) and a talking tree named “Groot” who can only say the words “I am Groot”. He's a very memorable character to say the least.

These two are bounty hunters who team up with the cold blooded assassin Gamora, the murderous Drax the Destroyer, and the human Peter Quill, who is a mercenary or thief of some sort packing a series of gadgets which are surely giving Boba Fett a massive hard-on somewhere, to form the titular gang of heroes. In the surprisingly intense and emotional opening scene we see a very young Peter Quill watch his mother die before being suddenly abducted by aliens and taken away from Earth forever. This experience of losing everything is ultimately what draws this group together, and its only one very effective aspect of how writer/director James Gunn tells this story.

The fact that the very heavy opening sequence works so well also sets up a brilliant contrast with the next scene, as Blue Suede's “Hooked on a Feeling” blasts across the title card and we see the adult Peter Quill dancing hilariously through an alien landscape. A huge part of the film's success is its wonderful ability to make instant switches in tone in a way that really enhances the experience. It isn't afraid of taking itself completely seriously as a sprawling space opera but also loves to walk right up to that line of seeming TOO serious and melodramatic before suddenly switching back to being completely irreverent. One minute characters are making intense and dramatic monologues about gaining ultimate power and bringing about the destruction of worlds and juuust when things start to go a little too far and your eyes are about to roll, Peter Quill calls someone a Ninja Turtle, the tension is completely broken and you're right back with it. This one-two punch is played for laughs again and again, but it also helps to sell the outlandish space-opera world of the story.

Chris Pratt as Peter Quill is the guy doing this most of the time and he is a HUGE part of why the movie succeeds on that front. Peter Quill as a character is supposed to the audience surrogate. He's an 80's kid from our world and so he views all of this in much the same way we would. This is a world with talking raccoons and trees and blue men running around and Quill reacts to all of it much the same way you or I would. This forces Pratt as an actor to have to hit a really interesting balance in his performance. Normally in a sci-fi world like this, you want the actors to seem like they totally buy into the reality of the fantasy world their characters inhabit. If you go and watch the audition tapes of various actors reading for Luke Skywalker, you'll see right away why they hired Mark Hammil. He was able to read lines about running to Tosche Station to pick up power converters as though it was a totally normal and mundane chore to be given. Because Hammil was able to take the world completely seriously, we were as well. Pratt has to do the same sort of thing while also filling the role of outside observer who is very much aware of the ridiculousness of it all and in my opinion he completely nails it.

The movie's amazing soundtrack is another huge part of keeping the movie grounded. Peter Quill's “Awesome Mix #1” is a great mix of 70's pop music that will surly go down in history as one of the great movie music mixes alongside The Big Chill or Pulp Fiction soundtracks. The songs are also deployed perfectly in the movie, setting exactly the right tone in the scenes where they appear. But not only do they enhance the style of the film, the music is also a huge part of Peter Quill's character as the cassette tape he uses to listen to these songs are his last and most important connection to Earth and the mother he lost. The cassette plays a significant part in his story and is one of the smartest touches in a very smart screenplay.

The other characters are almost as deep and interesting, although I tend to think Gamora and Drax are slightly less developed and not quite as lovingly rendered as the amazing duo of Rocket and Groot, the MCU's resident Han Solo and Chewbaca pair. Each individual character's personality and the relationship dynamics between them are established with wonderful efficiency. One of my favorite examples of this is when we first get to see Rocket go to work as he mastermind's the group's escape from Space Alcatraz (as I will choose to call it) which involves instructing Quill to steal a man's prosthetic leg. The moment where we discover why Rocket makes this rather odd request was one of my favorites in a movie packed with memorable scenes. The script also moves these characters from enemies to reluctant allies to actual friends in a way that always seemed believable.

The action scenes in these movies are done often long before the script is even finished and they are all very fun, even if I might quibble that some of them seem merely functional in terms of how they are presented. It doesn't really seem like James Gunn really put his own spin on how this stuff was presented. However, this isn't much of a concern though because of how good his screenplay is at putting these moments in an interesting context. The editing also succeeds in conveying the overall ebb and flow of tension in the set pieces. For example, I might not have been blown away purely by the stunt work or choreography of Gamora and Nebula's fight scene, but it did a good job serving its purpose in the context of the scene and built enough tension to keep things exciting. Plus, touches like the irony of watching Groot walking around in the background, prematurely executing the plan Rocket is outlining, help to perfectly set up the action.

Guardians of the Galaxy is my favorite film of the summer, and possibly my favorite film of the entire Marvel series. Its the funniest of the bunch and the best film of the 2^nd Phase of the MCU (an arc of films that I think are universally stronger than their predecessors). But it also doesn't require any knowledge of those films to work and I think if people give it the chance, could satisfy a very wide audience of people. Check it out.  

The Lost Art of Bubsy Burkeley and Classic Musical Spectacle.

That sequence, from the film commonly called Gold Diggers of 1933 (to distinguish it from its 1935 remake) is an artifact of mostly lost artform. Musicals in general are nowhere near as popular as they once were, even after the huge craze for them in the late 20's and 30's died down. But they have never truly disappeared. But one thing that seems to have disappeared is the sense of scale and fantasy. All of the famous musicals that everyone remembers, West Side Story, The Sound of Music, or even The Wizard of Oz, have song and dance sequences that stick closely to reality (in as much as a movie can when its characters are constantly and inexplicably bursting into song) and utilize choreography that shows off the skill of the dancers, as opposed to the skill of the filmmaker.

The classic musical director and choreographer Bubsey Berkely had a different way of doing things. He had a grandiose and fantastical style, and crafted sequences that pushed the limits of scale and complexity, often utilizing hundreds of dancers. But more than sheer size, Bubsey Berkeley also recognized how to bring the unique aspects of the film medium into these sequences. The clip above is a perfect example. It begins literally depicting a musical number on a stage. At first we see it unfold very much as if we were seeing it in a theater, complete with the staging and special effects you'd see in that medium, but eventually it morphs into a fantastical sequence that could only be done on film. The camera flies over dancers on a massive set. Dozens of violinists swirlling to the music creates a unique visual effect which then leads to another as the lights are dimmed and the violins become illuminated. This leads to yet more sequences employing cinematic visual effects and editing that expand the sequence beyond the borders of reality, creating something that feels more akin to a dream sequence, or Disney's Fantasia.

Berkeley became famous for this sort of sequence and continually sought to top himself. His sequences are full of optical effects and highly elaborate staging. One of the great pleasures of watching them is seeing how the camera and the editing become a part of the choreography. The use of the camera this way creates a sense of wonder and excitement, since you never really know what's coming. Berkeley also often filled the sequences with subtle visual metaphors and innuendo. A great example is this sequence from Dames (1934):

Its of course incredibly sexualized (this was before the indroduction of the Production Code). Bubsy Berkeley's extensive use of the male gaze has be widely discussed by many film scholars. That being said, I still think there's a great deal of pleasure to be gained from the sheer creativity that goes into it all. And I can't help but laugh when I see the shot at 4:45-5:05.

I really want to see someone try to bring this sort of style back to a modern musical. With the better part of a century past, I'd think the language of cinema has advanced to a point where a creative director who wanted to pay homage to those classics could do some really amazing stuff. Personally, I think that director would almost have to be Michel Gondry. He's a visual wizard and has a background making music videos. I think you can certainly see an echo of Bubsy Berkeley his video for The Chemical Brother's "Let Forever Be":

Ok. First off, I think there needs to be some minimum time period you need to wait before rebooting a franchise. More than a decade at least. Second, the first two of Raimi's Spider Man films were pretty good, and this needs to convince me that there is a reason why I shouldn't just watch those instead, and it didn't. I remember what happened last time Spidey tried to go all dark and edgy, and it wasn't pretty.

From the Shit I'd Get if I Were Rich File

I'd buy one of these things for a wall in my house. Not sure what film I'd want. Something with great colors. Some Terry Malick, Zhang Yimou's Hero, Kingdom of Heaven, only epics are coming to my mind. Wong Kar-Wai maybe?

http://www.brendandawes.com/project/cinema-redux/

Transformers 3

Oh god. What can you say about Micheal Bay at this point? I don't think anyone who looks at movies with even a squint of a critical eye every really expects to go into one of his films and then walk out of it thinking they'd seen a good film. But at the same time, Bay has becoming something of an auteur when it comes to big budget Hollywood excess. There's a distinct style to a Micheal Bay film that lets you know exactly what you're getting into. You know it'll have a mindless plot, two dimensional if not offensive characters, and a whole lot of stuff blowing up. Its just a matter of whether or not they've piled enough money on it to make you feel like you're getting something for the ticket price.

This is just how it works. The only way around it is if Micheal Bay finally grew up, but after all these years, I'm not holding my breath. But at least there is a certain stretch of time where the movie seems fully aware of its nonsense. Its flirts with homophobia, racial stereotypes, and other eye-rollers, but at least Bay's juvenile obsession with the male gaze is cranked up to the point that it comes across more as a wink at the camera, and less an invitation to 13 year old boys everywhere to satisfy their raging hormones. And in the “at least they tried” category, we have Francis McDormand trotted out to say “look, we can have non-sexpot female characters too!”.

But unfortunately, the real offense is that anyone thought they could pass off this peanut gallery as a cast of believable human beings. Ken Jeong it completely wasted, Tyrese Gibson and Josh Duhamel show up just to remind you that there are humans in the movie, and John Turturro only manages to make the stupidity seem intentional (which, as mentioned above, does help slightly). But in my opinion, it's McDormand whose talent suffers the worst levels of disregard, playing a character who seemed to be included purely to set up a scene at the end in which she gives Shia Lebouf the dream job he's been looking for. So imagine my surprise when that never happened.

As for the new love interest, Rosie-Huntington Whiteley, I thought she was perfectly adequate as a walking plot device with tits. If it had still been Megan Fox, playing a character we at least have some slight relationship with, the role might have felt like it mattered, but here we are.

But at least Shia Lebouf is still around, and he's always been the secret weapon of the Transformers films. He's always been the only actor in these cinematic junkyards with the humor and charisma to actually make you give two shits about him. And that is still very much the case here. I enjoyed watching his neurotic habits and jealous insecurities. Even if none of it adds up to anything, it makes him more relateable, and as the main character, it makes him the lynchpin that keeps the entire film from collapsing.

But boy is that put to the test. There was a good portion of this film where it really seemed to get it. The opening space-race sequence didn't do the revised-history thing as well as recent movies like X-Men: First Class, but it was nicely paced and an interesting concept. The momentum continues into the present day sequences, where we see Shia Lebouf's search for a job and the, ahem, deceptive machinations of the Decepticons (thank you, tip your server, I'll be here all week) maintained my interest throughout the first third of the film. The film seemed to know exactly what it was and was executing, and following a series of backstabs and betrayals, it looked like we were in for a perfect setup to the final epic showdown.

Unfortunately, it was at this point that the movie stopped, tred water for 45 minutes, showed Chicago being completely conquered in about 5 seconds, and then brought out Optimus Prime to essentially say, “All those people you just saw get killed? We decided to let all that happen so you guys wouldn't take us for granted.” (This is before he murders a dude not two seconds after the same dude saved his life. Optimus Prime is kinda a dick.) Somewhere in this purgatorial second act, the writers throw several half-baked, relevant-to-our-time themes in a blender and pour the sticky mess all over the middle reels. We get the the whole America under siege thing via a pointless Washington D.C. scene in which Megatron destroys the Lincoln Monument and sits on it like a throne. And of course, we get a parade of corrupt and incompetent government officials and corrupt corporate executives screaming shit like “Its hostile takeover time, Sam!"

Mercifully, a point comes where something blows up, and Micheal Bay promptly forgets about all of this. This is where the movie finally gets around to the cool shit. However meaningless the sound and fury, the final 45 minutes or so of Transformers 3 contains some truly spectacular sequences. The massive battle in downtown Chicago is enormous, and the location is mined for maximum potential. The too close, too fast camera work of the previous films is gone, replaced with beautiful long shots of buildings and the towering mechanical beasts ripping them apart. The in-battle gags are more interesting too, such as collapsing building scene (even if its a blatant Uncharted 2 ripoff) or the goofy, almost Verbinski-esque scene with Shia tethered to a ticking bomb.

And who knew Micheal Bay would be the one to finally show that 3D can work in a live action movie? (Avatar doesn't count). The 3D in the film is often subtle, but it never caused me any problems and in a few cases it looked absolutely spectacular. More importantly, the use of 3D seems to have pushed Bay to experiment with tracking shots and how he use the camera to move through space. There are several wonderful moments of the camera zooming through the battlefield environment, the most impressive of which is base jumping sequence. The event was filmed completely live, performed by actual professional base jumpers with 3D cameras rigged to their helmets. Its a movie jam packed with CGI, its this real stunt that stands out as the most memorable part of the film by far.

At this point, everyone probably knows what they're going to get with a Micheal Bay film, and Transformers 3 meets those expectations. And for whatever its worth, it is probably one of his better movies. If you're reading this and you just want to see something mindless or to geek out on the action scenes, by all means, check out the film, and if it isn't too expensive, try it in 3D. If you've seen a lot of Micheal Bay movies and found them tolerable, you might get something out of it as well. If you're a normal person or you have taste, sit tight. Only one week left till Harry Potter.

Note:

Props where props are due: the robot sex thing is a reference to Jay Pinkerton's review of The Lion, The Which, and the Wardrobe.

UPDATE: Apparently that review isn't there anymore...it was good stuff though. A classic. Famous stuff. We all remember it. He tore that movie to shreds and peppered it with pictures of lions having sex. Hence my robot thing. Cause fuck the Transformers franchise. 

Something To Do With Something Else: 4th of July

A few years ago Aaron and I went to watch a 4th of July fireworks show. We sat on his car in a park in Heyworth before the show, listening to some playlist of patriotic music they had coming from a speaker system. One of the songs that played was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA." I remarked to Aaron, "Why are they playing this? Isn't this a protest song against the Vietnam War?". At the time I wasn't a Springsteen fan, but I had a vague memory that Ronald Reagan had tried to use the song during his re-election campaign, causing a stir because he obviously misinterpreted the song's meaning and prompting Springsteen to ask him to stop using it. It seemed to me at the time that the organizers of the event had made the same mistake.

For all I know, I could've been right. They may have had no idea what the song was about but included it based on its chorus and general mood. But now that I am a hardcore fan of The Boss, I know that the song is in no way inappropriate at a 4th of July event.

It is true that the song isn't as upbeat as a casual listen might cause you to believe. Despite the bombastic style of the music, the first verse shows what place Springsteen is coming from:

"Born down in a dead man's town

The first kick I took was when I hit the ground

You end up like a dog that's been beat too much

'Til you spend half your life just covering up"

In the following verses he draws on his personal experiences in working class New Jersey to write about the struggles of Vietnam veterans due to the war and the economic hardships of the late 70's and early 80's. Springsteen laments how men were forced into a war only to be thrown into poverty on their return home.

"I got in a little hometown jam

And so they put a rifle in my hands

Sent me off to Vietnam

To go and kill the yellow man

chorus

Come back home to the refinery

Hiring man says "Son if it was up to me"

I go down to see the V.A. man

He said "Son don't you understand"

In the final verse, Spingsteen remembers a friend he lost in the war, and ends by expressing the hopelessness and helplessness of blue collar america.

"I had a buddy at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They're still there, he's all gone
He had a little girl in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I'm ten years down the road
Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to go"

Throughout the song is the chorus, a four times repetition of the desperate scream "Born in the USA!!" to a roaring rock anthem.

That men like George Will or whichever Reagan aide got him to call the song "a message of hope" misinterpreted the song in such a way to make them seem like exactly the sort of people the song is aimed at, the powerful men who glory in war and trumpet supposedly patriotic themes about a national pride that comes so easily to wealthy men such as they. Who, much as the song's anthemic style buries its themes of working class pain and loss, let their love of these things blind them to the suffering of the people who want to feel that same pride in their country, but who find it so hard to do when its let them down so much; when it had forced them to fight a war that robbed them of their loved ones and abandoned those who made it back. The Boss's scream of the titualar line in the chorus is a mockery of the jingoistic cries of the powerful, a challenge to their view of America, and a demand that they live up to their obligations to their fellow countrymen.

What's more patriotic than that?

Happy 4th of July

P.S. On a somewhat related note, everyone should check out the beautiful story he tells in this live recording of "The River" from the Live 1975-85 album.

The Dark Road to Perfection

If Black Swan, the latest troubled nocturne from that cinematic pied-piper Daron Aronofski proves anything, it’s that he hasn’t lost his seemingly effortless ability to lead an audience by the nose, directly into the nightmare his characters have built for themselves. As gripping as it is unsettling and as triumphant as it is terrifying, Black Swan is one of the years best films.

The plot will be familiar to anyone who’s seen the Powell-Pressburger classic, The Red Shoes. Both films are about ballet companies whose story parallels that of the ballet they are performing, and both are about the obsessive pursuit of artistic perfection. The influence of The Red Shoes on Black Swan is clear, particularly in the stunning, surrealistic dance sequences, which Matthew Libatique’s handheld camerawork takes to new psychological depths. The film opens with one of these sequences, which are probably best described by one of the film’s characters, “fast and visceral”.

Aronofski has a way of trapping an audience, of keeping them hooked on what he is showing them, no matter how horrifying it might be. This is an incredibly claustrophobic film (and I plan to spend a good deal of time examining it’s camerawork. The film is an essay on effective use of the close up) which by the end of it made me feel trapped in the main character’s head, fully immersed in her madness. But it never lost me, and never made me want to look away. Just when the tension neared the breaking point, something was thrown in, a clever quip or a hilariously creepy subway rider, to provide a welcome release. For a while anyway, because as soon as you thought you were settled in, Aaronofski pulls out another of his little tricks to keep you on edge (did that picture move? And whose face was that?).

And of course nobody could write about this film without mentioning the towering performance by Natalie Portman, by far the best of her career. She puts to shame nearly every actor who’s ever tried to go mad onscreen, losing her mind in a way that is never unconvincing and what’s more, actually kind of understandable. This isn’t one of those movies that asks you to just accept that its main character is losing their mind. In each scene, Portman’s performance is perfectly calibrated to it’s place the overall arc of her character, and you watch as the pressures, her troubled mother, vindictive rivals, and the constant overbearing need for perfection weigh on her increasingly fragile mind.

The various conflicts within Nina and the story of Swan Lake itself eventually come together in a way that, though you will probably see it coming, still manages to be incredibly satisfying. And I think there’s enough surprises in the way its all executed to stay interesting. The climax comes as Nina undergoes her inevitable transformation and the choice she must make to do it. The movie ends as the ballet ends, and in this reviewer’s opinion, it is, if I may, Perfect.