Star Trek Into Darkness (JJ Abrams, 2013)

Everything old is new again

(Warning: plot twists and story developments to be discussed in detail here)

So what about the movie? Had a blast. Loved coming back to a largely familiar-looking crew (largely because they were chosen and dressed and made up to look familiar), the way the performances either played with our knowledge of the series (Spock arguing with McCoy, Scotty fussing over warp engines, Chekov flubbing his Russian accent (weirdly Anton Yelchin is Russian-born, in an in-joke might be a touch too elaborate)) or wrung surprising variations, this being a whole other timeline (Christopher Pike giving Kirk fatherly advice; Kirk and Scotty butting heads over photon torpedoes--torpedoes, for crying out loud!). 

Love the new incarnation of Carol Marcus (Alice Eve--see above and tell me you disagree) and the retooled Khan Noonien Singh. As played by the preternaturally intelligent Benedict Cumberbatch, Khan doesn't blink much, or shift weight, or even recognize the itch in his crotch (I'm assuming he has one--all men do--and that it must be maddening). He's sleeker and more intimidating, even if his evil master plan doesn't make a lick of sense.

I mean--after the gunship attack Khan teleports to Kronos, the Klingon home planet. Why? To hide, of course. Kirk mounts an expedition to the planet, tangles with Klingon patrols, is in danger of being wiped out when Khan steps in and wipes them out instead. Why? To be taken prisoner, of course.

Waitaminute--if Khan goes through such lengths to evade capture (teleporting to Kronos), why go through such lengths to be captured (wiping out all those Klingons)?

Perhaps Khan wanted to be captured by Kirk? But he hardly knows the guy--they just glared at each other through a windshield before this. Perhaps he wanted someone to bring the torpedoes containing his crew within reach? But he seemed to have only learned then that the missiles contained his crew! And why were they put in the torpedoes in the first place--to hide them? Why give them to Kirk to fire at the planet--to get rid of them? Isn't the danger too great that someone would take a peek inside (which is exactly what happened)? Wouldn't it be easier to use a hacksaw and incinerator?

And why doesn't Khan just teleport to his crew right off--because he didn't know where they were? Okay...so he planned to evade capture, changed his plans when he realized where his crew was...but why save Kirk from the Klingons then? Isn't assuming that whoever hunts him knows where his crew is hidden too much to assume (and we all know what happens when we do that)?

Which matters less than one might think--once Abrams cranks the movie  to warp speed it whizzes along quite nicely, at one point (arguably the highest) reprising what may be the most famous scene in the entire series (with roles reversed), and re-enacting the most famous single cry in the entire series, only issued from a different mouth. Newcomers must be murmuring in fascination at the operatic overwroughtedness of it all, while authentic Trekkers hug themselves in ecstasy. Wondered myself if Abrams could sustain the clever parody / tribute all the way through, wanted to applaud when he somehow pulled it off.

Is it better than The Wrath of Khan? Not really. True Khan does seem more formidable, standing over a heap of dead bodies with bladed weapon in one hand--he's basically fighting for the survival of his men, will do anything for them (not to mention he's just designed a whole arsenal of superweapons). But the Khan played by Ricardo Montalban was filled with an all-consuming rage--he was always gulping in titanic breaths and letting it out slowly, as if to keep himself from bursting. He made more mistakes than his younger incarnation because Kirk kept pushing his button, and he couldn't resist making a grab at Kirk (his anger is his greatest weakness, and he knows it, Kirk knows it and still he can't help it). There was Melvillean grandeur to his rage, and a slightly comical, wholly compelling pathos.

By comparison this slimmer Khan 2.0 troubles our complacency but doesn't capture our sympathy--we hiss at him but don't laugh at nor love his predictability. Our reactions are altogether simpler, if fresher.

That freshness is Abrams' biggest virtue, at the same time most serious flaw. His reprise of Spock's death reversed is enjoyable for how cleverly it flipped over the original--we're enjoying the variation more than the scene's actual content (which I'm guessing when seen with fresh eyes is fairly if not all that memorably enjoyable). He's trading in a prequel / remake's most valuable asset--our nostalgic feelings for a well beloved character, plus the surprise we feel at seeing him so young (or young again). I submit it's an interesting last ploy for someone we've grown up with and known so long, but that it's at most filler material--stuff appended to what has already been the character's greatest moments. 

As for newcomers--that's where Abrams' flash 'n furious directing style comes into play. Lens flare to signal a portentous moment, shaky-cam to capture fast-moving action, chop-suey editing to hold ADHD viewers hostage (one of these days I need to talk about the the many and nowadays all-too-rare pleasures--the gradually mounting sense of dread, for one--of a slow-moving camera glide). 

(And here I might as well insert an aside noting how brutal the picture is--so Khan decimates half the Federation's senior officers, I can live with that; so the attacks on the Enterprise kills off a good number of redshirts and no one really comments (they're redshirts, for crying out loud--at one point Abrams actually cracks a joke at their expense); but crashing into San Francisco's downtown with almost no collateral consequences seems a touch, well, callous. McCoy freaking out to try save Kirk's life when hundreds or maybe thousands have died--I don't know. Even Shatner used to spare a line or two of concern for the bystander dead)

So is Into Darkness a good film? I did say I had a blast, didn't say I had a life-changing experience. Make of that what you will. 

5.18.13

Jolico Cuadra (1939 - 2013)

Never really thought I'd be writing this, but:

Jolico Cuadra, 1939 - 2013 

Best known for his poetry, particularly this poem--

"Wing hard, white-stallioned time:
The whirlwind sun upride
Where no sheerer
The crude bird dies.
Hanged in the mind’s eye, hold
Fast—shake out
The canines of God
The manbird locked in God’s bones
Him dogstar till the phoenix hour
The manbird locked
Till the phoenix hour. "

Dogstar

--but I'd known him for almost everything else.

I'd first met Jolico in the offices of the Manila Chronicle back in the '90s, when I practically lived in their editorial office, tapping away on one of their computers long after everyone else had gone home. He had an art column where he alternately terrorized and championed local artists, praising those he thought deserving, holding none sacred, raising a ruckus in his distinctly poetic prose.

We talked for hours. He told me of encountering artists and filmmakers (I remember a few of the names--Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Orson Welles, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Gerardo de Leon). He had wild stories (a friend once regaled him with a blow-to-blow sexual encounter with Pauline Kael ("they made love standing up")) and even wilder opinions (Pasolini was "filthy--a filthy man!" Gerardo de Leon was "an idiot!" which he later qualified: "you don't need to be an intelligent man to be a gifted artist"). 

Are any of the stories true? I don't know. But I had a grand time listening to them.

Even more interesting was what he loved. He thought Philip K. Dick was the greatest writer America ever produced--borrowed my copy of Dick's The Valis Trilogy and never returned it ("I'm rereading it for its ideas" he told me when I asked him about the book some years later). He loved Chiqui Gomez (also known as 'Auggusta de Almeida'), poet and stunningly beautiful woman: they met in '74 and started living together in '75, and she was at his side till the end. 

He didn't think much of our best Filipino filmmakers--Brocka, Bernal, Mike De Leon (for the record, I begged to disagree), but: "there is one I like--Mario O'Hara." 

This was in 1996, when the filmmaker's career was in a bit of a lull (two films made in a period of eight years), and his best known work Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (Three Years Without God, 1976) largely forgotten (both his and the film's reputation would be revived by a screening at the "Pelikula at Lipunan" festival around that time). Cuadra had never seen Tatlong Taong, but did see Insiang, and when he had the chance to talk to O'Hara criticized the film for being set in Tondo.

 O'Hara wasn't offended; he nodded in agreement. He had originally set the teleplay in Pasay (why Pasay is better than Tondo is explained in the article). 

On Bagong Hari (The New King) he had this to say: "(Dan Alvaro) was perfect. So quiet! Real killers are like that. The loud man walking down the street, threatening death, I don't notice. I'm afraid of the quiet man." 

When he finally saw Tatlong Taong--I'd arranged to have him attend a screening--he said it was "a great film." He pointed out that Peque Gallaga's Francis and Christopher De Leon's Masugi were probably lovers ("they don't look at each other's dicks when pissing") and loved how the women circling Nora's Rosario at the end of the film mirrored the children circling in the playground at the beginning of the film.

Cuadra, I had to admit, was more perceptive about and responsive to O'Hara's films than I was.

He was a wonderful man, an incredible asthete, a for the brief time we'd spent together good friend. I'd finally gotten hold of Auggusta only last year after a long time spent out of touch, and asked for news of him; she replied that he's been struggling with Parkinson's the past three years, and was wondering if I could send money.

I tried; I couldn't. I sent her a message apologizing, said I'll send something as soon as I can afford it. I planned to send something this end of May.

Too late.

Death happens all the time; it happens to friends, to family, to people we care for and admire and (even if we're only fooling ourselves) we believe are going to outlast us, be around forever or at least long enough for us to meet again, to help in some small way. 

I know, I know; I should've known better. Doesn't mean I have to like it.      

May 17, 2013 

Iron Man 3 (Shane Black); The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann)--re-edited

(Warning: plot twists and story developments discussed in close detail)

Stark raving

And the celebration continues with Iron Man 3, where billionaire industrialist (only in comic books--and by extension the movies--can this be considered a respectable appellation) Tony Stark has his toys taken away from him and he's reduced, so to speak, to playing with the cardboard box.

It's an interesting situation--a way of upping the drama for this second sequel, without upping the scale of conflict from the previous Marvel movie's worldwide alien-invasion menace. Stark's forced to think literally on his feet, to cope with an enemy that's the opposite of what he is--functioning ubermen who are at the same time walking time bombs. No super machines, just super biology.

Director Shane Black (who cowrote the script with TV writing and producing veteran Drew Pearce) almost manages to get away with it, only the fight sequences don't quite emphasize the qualitative difference between Stark's exoskeleton armor and people who are themselves living weapons (you'd think said living weapons would be more agile, or graceful, or adaptable). 

I do like the quick-repair ability, that seems to make sense: as these people are basically speeded-up metabolisms, their healing is also speeded up. The exothermic reaction is silly tho--where does that come from? And why is Stark's armor unable to deal with it (Surely a heat sink or thermal pump of some kind would be basic to his suit's design?)? 

(Gratuitous aside: surely Stark would do better taking his cue from Neil Gaiman's latest take on Cybermen (warning: plot details discussed))

Arguably the best image from the film is the sight of Stark dragging his armor--stolen I suspect from Django. Feel ambivalent watching that: on one hand Black is channeling a far superior action film (suffers in comparison, of course); on the other I've been here before. At least Black's theft is more emotionally resonant than Tarantino's (where's Foxx's coffin/armor on a leash?). 

That's about it for me. Black's a sometimes funny writer-filmmaker--his Kiss Kiss Bang Bang I remember (barely) to be a darkly comic amusement, and possibly the highlight of his career to date--but the action sequences both there and in this picture are your standard-issue shaky-cam footage, cut ADHD style: hardly coherent, much less comprehensible. The script comes up with half a dozen interesting premises--Stark without his toys, the mecha vs. bio thing, and so on--but fails to develop them in an interesting way. The Mandarin's soldiers (for example) are barely fleshed out, which is a real shame: theirs is the most interesting situation (what would a man think and feel and say, knowing he's doomed to explode at any moment? And what would motivate him to pledge his loyalty to the one who put him in this predicament in the first place?).

Then there's this article, which tries to make the case that this third installment is really a feminist tract in disguise. Must be one helluva disguise, because I don't see it: the Maya character is mostly a smart egg seduced and exploited by the real villain; Pepper is a largely annoying hostage who manages at the last minute to kick some butt. 

Whedon in comparison is more overtly for women's causes, has produced at least two TV series with women protagonists, and has consistently put strong women characters front and center in his work (in one film she's the single strongest character). The Wired article mentions The Avengers as failing some silly test, which is frankly nuts: Whedon wrote Black Widow as a major character, with her own (fairly complex) inner conflicts and motives, her own character arc, and her own kickass scene--all the more impressive for being sans superpowers, or (for the most part) digital effects.

...actually would love to have seen Maya reveal herself to be the real villain: someone from Stark's crowded bedroom past, who he betrayed or rejected and who's out for his bal--blood. Simpler, more elegant solution to a needlessly overcomplicated problem, based on the oldest conflict of all...

Maybe the movie's biggest failing: Stark running out of worthy adversaries, not just physical but verbal; as played by Robert Downey Jr. he's the quickest wit around and for most of the picture his only sparring equal is himself, which quickly gets tired. Guy Pearce, who can be villainous, is strangely unthreatening here; would love to see Ben Kingsley take a crack, but of course Black quickly tosses that possibility out the picture window (I incidentally guessed the Mandarin's true nature twenty minutes in--Kingsley pops up again and again and not once speaks an unscripted line?--which doesn't speak much for the twistedness of Black's plot). In Whedon's The Avengers (which I wrote about at length) Stark has to deal with a Norse god, an earthbound titan (who doubles as the only brain able to keep up with him), a one-eyed badass--there's no end of inflated egos to bounce off against and that (not the largely digitized action) is what made the movie interesting.

Maybe the movie's even bigger failing (this and every other recent comic-book franchise): its inability to create a distinct look for the film, a stylized, parallel world where superheroes can convincingly exist--or a stylized enough world to at least hold our attention, maybe even fire our imagination (Tim Burton managed with his Batman films, Guillermo del Toro with his Hellboy series and--further back--Robert Altman with Popeye and Mario Bava with Diabolik!). Maybe what's needed isn't a recalibrated script, or better cast of actors, or more on-camera special effects; maybe what's needed is a filmmaker with a vision, and the talent to properly realize it. 

So--what? Not a lot of kiss-kiss, mainly digitized bang-bangs, and an outsized admittedly talented star, standing alone on the big stage. Yes, he is Iron Man. The real question is: why on Earth should we care?

Grate Gatsby

First thing you hear from naysayers is: "I can't stand the hip-hop." Lovers of the picture ask that people be more open-minded, that they realize jazz was the hip-hop of its day, as shocking an affront to American ears with perhaps (since plenty of the great jazz singers and performers were black) the same undercurrent of racist indignation.

I get it; I can take the anachronism and move on, I see where rap is meant to dynamite one's complacency and allow the introduction of an unwelcome idea or two (though I'd reply that there are a few lesser-known, period-appropriate jazz and classical pieces that could serve just as well, and using "Rhapsody in Blue" to announce Gatsby is about the laziest choice for introductory song I can possibly imagine). 

What I can't take--what makes Lurhman's Gatsby the visual equivalent of a cheese grater applied to the knee--is how loud Luhrmann's movie is, in every sense of the word. How it shrieks out plot points in advance, heavily underlines them, highlights them several times over with a screaming bright-pink marker, and--for good measure--floats the relevant text in man-high letters across the big screen. 

...not an enemy of voiceover narration per se, far from it--Bresson and later Scorsese have shown us how it can be properly done--but Luhrmann in his self-declared respect for the novel uses Fitzgerald's prose extensively to the point where it functions as a crutch, telegraphing what should have been subtleties: the moment, say, when Daisy tells Gatsby that she loves him without directly saying so, right under her husband's nose; or the moment when Daisy decides to betray Gatsby (for the former Luhrmann uses Cliff Notes excerpts from the book; for the latter DiCaprio is asked to do an Al Pacino-style freakout, and then Luhrmann uses Cliff Notes excerpts). 

The famed blinking green light at the end of the pier--so neatly introduced in the book as an enigmatic signal from across the bay--comes across here more like a Close Encounter of the Third Kind, with the camera swooping close enough to make First Contact. When Myrtle is hit by a car she flies across the air, flashing her pantied crotch at the giant Dr. T.J. Eckleburg's baleful, bespectacled gaze ("Oh, you impudent tart!" you imagine him whispering with delighted outrage). 

The parties are overscaled carnivals with Gatsby as reclusive ringmaster (giving some bite to Tom Buchanan's quip that Gatsby drives a "circus wagon") but the real glory of Fitzgerald are the dinner and party conversations, the way the talk seems to pingpong in different directions yet somehow converge with eerie precision (like filings in a faint magnetic field) into a grand design, an insignia of the decadent '20s--on presenting this aspect the movie is an absolute failure, with barely the patience to sit still enough for one verbal exchange to register, much less a gaggle of em. 

Does Fitzgerald write about vulgar excess? Yes, but there's nothing vulgar or excessive about his prose: he suggests where others might explicitly state, omits where others might indulge (in this he shares something with fellow contemporary Ernest Hemingway: an unstated lust for simplicity, an equally covert fascination with the unwholesome). One wonders what antics occurred in the other rooms of Gatsby's mansion that Nick failed to visit, or what enterprise Gatsby is involved in that even common acquaintance Walter Chase (confessing to Tom) is "afraid to tell me about." Fitzgerald leaves details of Gatsby's wealth and criminal activities to dissolve into the dark and distance, allowing our imagination to take over; the result is bigger than the book itself, an outsized portrait of a self-made man--one of the most memorable in American literature.

Luhrmann's problem is he can't do elegant to save his life--he dives right in and luxuriates like a pig in a cesspool (apologies to all pigs; all cesspools too). This is American literature as reimagined by Michael Bay only, I suspect, worse--at least Bay doesn't aspire to art, is upfront about doing it for the money.  

Luhrmann presents the eponymous man as unabashed romantic hero, for the most part ignoring signs and indications in Fitzgerald's novel that Gatsby may also have been a naive fool. Or rather, the signs are present (Luhrmann is that faithful to the text) but the preponderance of evidence--from "Rhapsody in Blue" to DiCaprio's intense line readings to the heart-on-sleeve music--urges us to root for Gatsby because (gag) He Is Us.

DiCaprio's mouth struggles to push the mush of an upper class New England accent past his lips (he gives the impression of having hired a diction coach only weeks before); he has the guarded eyes and studiedly relaxed pose of an infiltrating outsider, a deep-penetration agent high on overconfidence and desperate bluff, only a step ahead of exposure (is this really Fitzgerald's Gatsby? I don't know; I just know it's compulsively watchable). Carey Mulligan is anxious in a different way: she seems seems timid, out of her depth in dealing with her character--and rightly so, as Daisy is The Love of Gatsby's Life, and she's not up (as she herself exasperatedly informs him) to the demands of the role.

Luhrmann ends Gatsby's life with a shot stolen from the opening of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, then glosses over the father's visit--the little reveals from Gatsby's childhood and past that help clarify (or complicate) his character--to go straight for the tragic-heroic funeral (all that's missing really are a drifting Viking boat in flames and perhaps an erupting volcano, neither of which are in the book and neither of which, surprisingly, Luhrmann is able to cram into his Dagwood Sandwich movie). He does the ending in a straightforward manner, or as straightforward as anything he's ever done: Nick Carraway (a largely disheveled Toby Maguire, channeling Fitzgerald by way of William Faulkner) solemnly intones the closing lines ("So we beat on, boats against the current...") while the words flash like digital displays against dark water. Not for Luhrmann the simplicity of John Huston's masterful adaptation of James Joyce's great short story The Dead, where Joyce's words are spoken quietly against a snowblown darkness--Luhrmann, apparently, has no confidence in the magic of Fitzgerald's words, no confidence in his own ability to depict that magic on the big screen. He simply must have his digital. 

Who could have done a valid take on Gatsby? Robert Altman's overlapping dialogue I submit would have been perfect for the parties. Bob Fosse directed a lurid '20s crime melodrama on the theater stage (Chicago), dealt with the death throes of the period on the big screen (Cabaret). 

Max Ophuls has done Hollywood films, has done films depicting elaborate parties, has done period pictures portraying the upper classes, has tied them all together with gorgeously sinuous long-take tracking shots. Orson Welles entered films by way of radio--you hear it in the way his characters' dialogue overlap, how it's overheard before the start of one scene, spills like champagne into the next; you hear it in the music and sound effects that bridge his sequences, the aural transitions that whip his film into higher velocities. Gatsby might have been filmed in the manner of The Magnificent Ambersons only with a less gracious upper class, the conversation nevertheless glittering like a crystal chandelier.

Anyone alive? Woody Allen, if he could be persuaded to do someone else's material, might inject a welcome dose of comedy (Gatsby for all its gaiety lacks a sense of humor). Alan Rudolph has visited the period a few times (The Moderns; Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle); Michael Apted did a lovely little thriller once (Agatha).

David Fincher doesn't flinch from period work (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); neither does Brian De Palma (The Untouchables). Both have a gliding camera style that (like Ophuls') allows Fitzgerald's characters to talk to each other properly (their defining characteristic). And if you want some really offbeat young Turk to do the honors, I hear Mulligan has Nicolas Winding Refn's number on speed dial.

Meantime you have this, and this to put it mildly stinks. Jack Clayton's 1974 version (with Robert Redford as Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy) may have choked on its own good taste; Luhrmann goes the other extreme, shoving his arm so far up his ass he could grab hold of his tongue and pull himself inside out. Don't know which is the greater horror, don't much care; I'm just waiting (possibly forever) for a proper adaptation of the novel.

5.11.13