The "originality problem", which has nothing to do with originality

After the apparently disappointing box office opening weekend for Tomorrowland, Variety posted an article "'Tomorrowland' exposes Hollywood's Originality Problem",which points to it as a shining example of why studios would rather make franchises than gamble on original movies. Nobody should be surprised to hear it's because franchises continue to make money, and Bret Lang, the article's writer, seems to suggest that viewers are less likely to see films based solely on the actors involved. And while he does mention that films like Inception, Gravity, and Interstellar have all been hits, he claims that today movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, War of the Worlds, and Mr. and Mrs. Smith wouldn't get made, due to waning star power and the risks they carried.

Firstly, to nitpick, I have to point out that two of the three 2005 films he mentioned are only sort of original; with franchises reigning it's easy to call anything that's not a major part of the current cultural climate "original," but Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is based on an extremely well known children's book, and even War of the Worlds is an adaptation. I think we tend to complain too much about adaptations (particularly young adult fiction, but that's a different discussion); it's terrible and annoying until it's your favorite book or tv show. Johnny Depp and Tom Cruise also aren't the best examples of how star power is waning; in the last ten years Depp has become a caricature of himself along with Tim Burton, and Tom Cruise has lost almost all of his goodwill with fans from his erratic behavior (remember the couch jumping? denying all of psychiatry? That hadn't happened quite yet.) and Scientology ties. Both films also had household name directors; Burton's prior film was Big Fish, which at the time I remember hearing nothing but good things about, and Spielberg's last collaboration with Cruise, Minority Report, was also a hit.

But regardless, I still think "originality" isn't the problem; it's marketing. Lang does mention in his article that Tomorrowland's trailers were too vague to give people a reason to see it, and that's definitely something that needs to be examined further. You can't take a step without tripping over some hype for the latest Marvel movie or DC project or the Star Wars still of the day, so of course when people make decisions on what to see this weekend, those will be the first things they go to. On the other hand, there are "original" movies that don't have a fraction of the effort put into their marketing. Trailers are great, but for someone who doesn't see a lot of movies in theaters, commercials are incredibly important. I remember last year I found out about Edge of Tomorrow* from the trailer, but when the commercials started on tv, they told you nothing about the film besides Tom Cruise, desert, guns. When it underperformed, the studio recut the ads, not to show any context or try to sell anything about the story, but to rebeand it as Live, Die Repeat, which was originally the tagline. . Because when you want more people to see your film, the solution is to completely rename it. Personally, I knew people who would have loved Edge of Tomorrow, but never saw it in theaters because they had no idea it existed. John Wick came out later that year, and I only knew about it because of the internet; I never saw a single commercial for it, and "Keanu Reeves fights dudes" should not be particularly hard to sell.

Unfortunately this problem is far wider than summer and action films; remember how Selma got ignored in practically all the industry awards nominations? One of the reasons for that was that they didn't have enough in the marketing budget to send out screeners. It had a great release date, Christmas Day, but that was only in limited release, and it had way less incoming advertisment fanfare compared to what Birdman and Boyhood got. If the marketing can't compete with bigger films, of course the film isn't going to do as well. It seems like the studios expect their "original" films, when they do deign to make them, to sell themselves, and then they're disappointed when the box office revenue won't power the gravy train.



*I'm aware that Edge of Tomorrow is actually based off of a manga named All You Need Is Kill, but for this conversation it's "original" enough.

TriBeCa part 2 - narratives

I went much safer with narratives than I intended to; at this time only one of the films I saw doesn't have a distribution deal, and half of them have familiar actors involved (which probably has something to do with the first point). For the most part I avoided movies I could see pretty soon; Good Kill and Far From Men interested me but both have May release dates. Unfortunately, due to bad timing or just plain exhaustion there were a few I wanted to see and regret not doing so. Cronies and Lucifer came highly recommended; they were both featured on the festival website for cinematography and Latin American films (which Ives seen almost none of.) The Survivalist had its world premiere at TriBeCa, and it's always nice to see some speculative fiction, and I was looking forward to some oddball dark comedy in Applesauce and Mickey Rourke in Ashby. There's only so much one person can do though, so here's what i actually did see:

Further posts coming!

It's been about two weeks since my last post, and since I tend to disappear from this blog I wanted to explain why (because I actually have a reason this time). My laptop is in for repairs, so I've been running off my phone, library computers, and my eight year old dilapidated laptop with a terrible keyboard. Just applying to jobs has been a monumental pain in the ass, so part 2 of the Tribeca report is going slower than I would like.

The good news is that in the meantime I've seen three other films: Clouds of Sils Maria (fascinating, love Kristen Stewart), The D Train (missed opportunity, possibly kinda offensive???), and Ex Machina (I LOVE ROBOTS AND OSCAR ISAAC), and I plan to write a real post about at least one of them. Probably Clouds of Sils Maria, because there's a lot to unpack there both about being a woman in the entertainment industry and the art of acting itself.

I do have a letterboxd account that I update more regularly with small quips if you just have to know what I've been watching; I try to go into more detail here. Please do not judge me for watching John Wick three times in one month; I was going through a rough time and it's the perfect film to get rid of a bad mood.

TriBeCa 2015 roundup: what do we do at festivals anyway?

I’m back, and i’m feeling weirdly reflective after this year's festival. I saw an odd bunch of films this year, but somehow not odd enough for me? For Tribeca I decide pretty haphazardly, influenced by how much I can get into for free while volunteering for the festival (tip: of the three festivals I’ve worked, Tribeca gives you the most chances to see movies by far; if you hang out on the rush lines of venues on the last Sunday in the evening, you might see volunteers giving away screenings vouchers that they’ve accumulated. It’s far from a reliable plan, but if you’ve been working all festival there are only so many films you can see in a weekend!) This year though, I was kind of surprised at how little I ventured out of my comfort zone, or even into independent fare. I didn’t catch anything particularly weird like Der Samurai; three of the films I saw have well known names, and one of them is coming out in a month. I kind of regret delving into smaller and/or foreign fare; Lucifer in particular is one that I’m sad I missed.

It begs the question: what am I looking for in film festivals? Is it to see sneak previews of upcoming films? To broaden my film horizons? To see weird shit that probably won’t get major distribution (or that will run for a week at Lincoln Center where I’d inevitably miss it)? Tribeca so far has given me the most choices in what I end up seeing, and this year I’m not sure I used my choices wisely.

One thing I can definitely say I did was watch more documentaries than I usually do; typically they’re not my cup of tea. I generally chose smaller fare than the most buzzed about docs (In Transit, Thank You For Playing, Transfatty Lives), but I did catch some interesting stuff.

Tribeca Film Festival coverage - The Canal & Der Samurai

Horror has always been a genre that I've been iffy about, and the first two films I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival, Ivan Kavanaugh's The Canal and Til Kleinert's Der Samurai turn out to show exactly what makes the genre so hit and miss for me. One is my least favorite film that I saw at the festival, and the other is my absolute favorite (which includes award winners such as Zero Motivation and Point and Shoot), and by comparing the two it's clear what makes a psychological thriller work, and how Der Samurai lives up to the genre and The Canal doesn't.

The Canal follows David, a film archivist who discovers that the house he lives in with his wife and child was the site of a grisly murder where a man violently murdered his wife after he found out she was cheating on him. The story hits hard for him, as he has suspicions about his own wife, and when she goes missing and he digs up more disturbing crimes committed in the house, he begins to suspect that something paranormal is occuring. Der Samurai follows a young and inexperienced police officer, Wolski, on patrol in a small German town, who is currently appeasing a wolf that has been threatening the area. On one night, he encounters a katana-wielding figure in a dress wreaking havoc on the community who is quite interested in him.

The first difference between the two films is that The Canal doesn’t effectively heighten tension; David grows more and more frantic, but what he’s reacting to doesn’t change very much. There’s a lot of energy directed to him trying to convince others of the danger he perceives, but as the film progresses there’s not enough of an escalation to make me invested in whether the malevolent forces David is afraid of are real. Der Samurai starts strong with the minor but upsetting threat of the wolf who ransacks yards and who can only be appeased by raw, dripping meat, and from there continues to up the ante and stakes all throughout the film. The Samurai at first is simply unnerving, then progresses to increasing levels of violence as well as psychological warfare. Wolski, an officer who is barely taken seriously by the neighborhood malcontents, is suddenly thrust into a rapidly escalating situation involving a figure who seems inexplicably drawn to him

Secondly, in a psychological thriller, the main character should have some sort of connection to the impending threat, something which shakes up the protagonist's self image and puts them on edge. There is initially a specific figure that David is afraid of who could provide for a foil; the man who murdered his wife in the house David now lives in. But while the film briefly flirts with the implication that David has much in common with the killer, the main source of terror is linked to the house itself after he finds a plethora of articles about other murders, suicides, and occult rituals that have taken place inside, weakening the psychological elements in favor of gore and jump scares. While Der Samurai is far from short on the gore, the Samurai is closely linked to Wolski from the beginning; he sees Wolski as an equal and seems to believe his violent and impulsive actions are a favor towards Wolski. The Samurai is a physical threat to the town, but more importantly, he is a threat to Wolski self-image, and that is the real drive behind the film.

Thirdly, The Canal treats David's occupation as a film archivist as a gimmick to be picked up and dropped; there is a very awkward line in the opening of the film that connects people whose images we see in archival film to ghosts. While the film attempts to make a further connections that the ghosts David fears only can be captured on film, it's not explored nearly enough to be relevant to the story. It's an interesting idea that's not really developed enough to be particularly significant. On the other hand, Wolski's position as a cop is crucial to his character and the film; the Samurai uses Wolski's ineffectiveness as an authority figure and reluctance to use deadly force as a weapon to tease and enrapture Wolski throughout the film. The Samurai's recklessness, wanton violence, and transvestism constrast with Wolski's hesitatance and struggle to live up to the masculine ideal of the cop.

I'm not going to say that Der Samurai is a perfect film; the final confrontation is oddly campy, even for a film with mutiple beheadings and a slow dance in front of a funeral pyre. But it has so much more depth than The Canal and it's a shame that it hasn't been picked up for distribution.

The Unknown Known

Anyone expecting Errol Morris' documentary consisting of interviews with former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to either condemn or redeem him will be disappointed. The Unknown Known has little interest in judging him, but instead simply asks "Who is this guy?" It seems like an odd question, and possibly an irrelevant one considering his massive impact on our government and the "War on Terror", but it leads to insights that are much more interesting than a more confrontational interview would reveal.

Much of the film is narrated by Rumsfeld himself; reading selections from the thousands of memos he wrote or recorded during his entire career. The most interesting ones focus on language and definitions; showing Rumsfeld's obsession with not necessarily information, but the phrasing of information. He talks us through various parts of his career (though with some omissions) but what Morris is really focusing on is Rumsfeld's version of these events. Occasionally he will refute something Rumsfeld says, to his face or by showing a clip that proves him wrong, but mostly Morris is content to just let Rumsfeld's statements hang in the air, instead focusing on his mostly paradoxical demeanor. The poster of The Unknown Known asks "Why is this man smiling?", and that's a question that the viewer will often be wondering. Rumsfeld's dopey smile appears at the most inappropriate times, as if he considers his checkered career sort of as an inside joke.

When I was a kid and the Monica Lewinsky situation was making headlines, I remember President Clinton was lampooned for dodging a question by asking for the definition of "is." That ridiculousness is Rumsfeld incarnate; he redefines words to suit his agenda, and then retroactively changes those definitions when criticized as if his first definition never existed. His media presence during the Iraq war was all about dodging questions by nitpicking at journalists' word choices; their questions, when interpreted through the "Pentagon dictionary", were nonsensical, and therefore he did not have to answer them. Cue goofy smile.The Unknowwn Known is an attempt to unpack the man behind the buzzwords and philosophy, and see if there's anything there. It turns out that Rumsfeld unwittingly provides an answer himself when asked why he agreed to the film, and while I won't spoil it, I will tell you: it ends with that damn smile.

NYFF - The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is a fun, uplifting ride with just enough substance to justify its wish fulfillment. Ben Stiller plays the titular character, a quiet everyguy who regularly loses himself in spectacular fantasies. He's into a woman at work but can't figure out how to talk to her, there are massive layoffs at his job at Life Magazine and the man in charge is a giant douchebag, and he has nothing interesting to put on his Eharmony dating profile. When a coveted negative from a famous photographer that only will communicate with him goes missing, he has to bite the bullet and go out on his own to find the photographer and save his job.

Emotionally, Walter's character arc is pretty predictable, but it's an incredibly fun ride, from the ridiculous fantasy sequences (one in which he and the smarmy executive duke it out in a superpowered fistfight across the city is particularly funny), to the characters he meets while traveling the world on his colleague's tail, to his constant correspondence with an Eharmony tech support staff member. The obvious message is that Walter goes from daydreaming about adventures to actually going on them, breaking out from his role as a meek everyman into something special, but I think the addition of the romantic subplot and Walter's waning job security add a little more heft to it. For one thing, although his love interest, Cheryl, isn't much of a fleshed out character (though magnitudes more so than the interest in About Time), she and Walter first bond over a common interest; she's intrigued by the mystery of the missing negative and actually interested in his work. Her son, Rich, also warms up to Walter because they share an enthusiasm for skateboarding. It's nice to see a character that starts off with reasons for the supporting characters to fall for them; even an average person has some sort of interest or unique talent, though they might not realize it.

Of course, an average person getting to travel halfway around the world in search of the most important item for his company is wish fulfillment at its finest, especially when succeeding means showing up a cartoonishly obnoxious boss. But the film is funny and charming enough that for the most part, it doesn't really matter, and the fact that it's both about living up to your full potential through taking risks and recognizing your previous experiences are more unique than you may give them credit for.

The reviews so far have been pretty polarized; and I think it mostly comes down to whether you're okay with a film that is so unabashedly wish fulfillment. It was also apparently hyped up as an Oscar contender, which it's probably not, but it's a sweet, funny movie that's touching without feeling manipulative. The only solid complaint I have is that the executive played by Adam Scott is pretty over the top in his assholishness, and his beard is ridiculously distracting, but that's a really small quibble.