7 Films With Genius Nerds In

1. Proof

This is one of the few with a girl math nerd. That makes me like it.

2. 21

This is one of these stories about a really nice guy who turns bad for a while but is ultimately redeemed. I think the end goes on for about five minutes too long. You also sort of know how it’s going to end, but the journey is great. I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat.

Oh and the story weaves together so well I don’t believe for a moment that this movie has much to do with the true story upon which it is based.

3. The Social Network

A lot has already been said about this story. It was voted the number two film of 2010 according to Margaret and David’s viewers’ poll  (after Inception).

When I saw it, I doubted the authenticity of the strippers and the Asian fangirls. Mark Zuckerberg has said himself that in reality it was just a bunch of guys cutting code. My experience of programmers tells me this was far more likely to be the case. It’s interesting, though, that toilet cubicle sex and nightclub stripper scenes are now ‘obligatory’ in any coming of age/success story, even when those things don’t really fit the story.

Even Mark Zuckerberg isn’t Mark Zuckerberg.

Are viewers so hungry for those done-before scenes that we’ll refuse to sit through any film which refuses to include them for the sake of authenticity?

4. Good Will Hunting

I didn’t really buy Ben Affleck as a nerd. I watched it recently and that bowl haircut looks suitably nerdy, but only because it’s dated. This is not the first time Robin Williams has played an inspirational teacher figure. Seems to be one of his fortes.

The phrase, “I’m going to see about a girl” felt cheesy. And last impressions last.

ps ‘Has a critic ever commented on the fact that Matt Damon clearly ripped off the interview scene in Trainspotting for Good Will Hunting?- courtesy of @sarahlapolla

5. THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

I have yet to see the film. Edit: I have since seen the film and preferred the book, mainly because I felt the main character was miscast.

The back of the book tells me that Lisbeth Salander is ‘a genius computer hacker’ who ‘tolerates no restrictions placed upon her by individuals, society or the law’. This makes her a fascinating character. I haven’t seen the film, but I found her the most engaging character in the novel, and wished more of the book could have been about her.

The book was titled ‘Men Who Hate Women’ in its original Swedish edition, and I wonder why this was changed for an English audience. The original title is more honest and more representative of the sadism contained within. This makes its English title slightly disingenuous, because this book is about men involved in power games as much as it is about a girl.

That said, part of what makes this book a page turner is that extreme wrong is dished out to this girl, and many of us have to keep reading because we know she’s going to exact revenge. There is something very sweet about being underestimated. It’s so much more satisfying than being overestimated.

6. 17 AGAIN

Ned Gold is the classic fantasy and SF loving nerd into cosplay and learning Elvish who is tortured through high school then makes it big after high school by inventing software that prevented people from pirating music. He also invented the thing that allowed people to pirate music, but ‘that was a happy coincidence’.

As the main star of this movie goes through torture in his life life, it’s apparent to me that nerds are the happiest sort of person in life, and in fiction, because their interests and obsessions never let them down.

7. VITUS

This was described in the TV Guide as ‘uplifting’, so I knew I could watch it with the three year old hanging about. Sure enough, she took an interest, then went over to the piano and banged out a few tunes. Well, I should really put ‘tunes’ in the quote marks they deserve. This was a good family film for a rainy day, as long as your family doesn’t mind reading subtitles.

Related Links: 

Gendering Intelligence and Sexuality on The Big Bang Theory from Flow TV; The Learning Secrets of Polyglots and Savants from 99 Percent; Are Smart People Getting Smarter?, from Wired; The genius who lives downstairs – extract, from The Guardian.

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Dialogue and General Ridiculousness

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

- E. B. White

This week I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer – the 1992 movie. I’d never seen it. I wasn’t expecting great things.

But I can see why it garnered a cult following. As one reviewer writes on IMDB:

This film is built for total entertainment and some of the dialog is the best around just because it is so ridiculous.

What is it about the dialogue? I think it is this:

Characters say things which, in a real world situation, would be understood from subtext.

Here’s an example. The coach is pep-talking his team:

Coach: Therefore, if we all work together, together it’ll all work out. Are you with me? Now, get out there! All right! Score some, uh, points! Hey, you missed practice again today! I think you better sit down and think about how that made me feel.

Here we’ve got humorous repetition:  ’if we all work together, together it’ll all work out.”

Next, cliches: ‘Are you with me? Now, get out there! All right!’

We’ve also got someone who doesn’t really know what he’s talking about: ‘Now, get out there! All right! Score some, uh, points!’

Finally it’s clear that the one who cares most about the game is the coach: ‘I think you better sit down and think about how that made me feel.’ This might be a Freudian slip if it didn’t happen in fiction, but in humorous dialogue Freudian slips are exploited.

Another example from Buffy:

Buffy: All I want to do is graduate from high school, go to Europe, marry Christian Slater, and die.

This level of self -awareness and -deprecation is rare in someone as vacuous as Buffy but this line is hers because it’s a summary of what the viewer has already worked out about her. She is a type. (She has a dramatic character arc over the course of the movie, but she starts out as a pretty, blond, empty-headed cheerleader.) This is a great example of telling not showing and makes for humorous dialogue.

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Pilot episode of Buffy is always a fun reminder that Willow & Xander had another best friend who DIES & they never speak of him again.

Best example of a surprisingly 3-dimensional character – DARLA. Where she begins & who she becomes is so impressive.

- @sarahlapolla

When you have to shoot, shoot. Don’t talk.

I would like to nominate for the sequel:

1. A character has some difficult decision to make so goes and sits on the toilet, while blasting water out of the basin tap, because everyone will then think they are drawing a bath, for some reason, in the middle of the day. Water running from a tap sounds nothing like peeing into a toilet bowl, which is a higher pitch and more gentle of flow.

This annoys me particularly because I live in Australia, where you don’t waste water. I just want to turn the tap off.

Related to this: When two people discuss something important in a car they always look at each other way more than is safe. “Keep your eyes on the road!” I want to shout. Besides, how many people really look at each other when they’re sitting side by side? Isn’t that the point of having important discussions in cars, on fishing wharves, park benches and other places where you don’t have to gaze meaningfully into each other’s eyes?

I had never spent so much time with my father… he talked more freely than he’d ever done about Mama and their life together, the car a kind of confessional. I was doing the driving and it helped that road safety precluded much eye contact.

- Alan Bennett, Untold Stories

2. Two baddies discuss important business at a restaurant or cafe. Just as one baddie is about to divulge the sensitive information, a waitress comes over and says something like, ‘Are you ready to order?’ At the very least, some other patron walks past the table, laughing and smiling, and the baddie waits until they’ve gone, just to impress upon the audience that no one should be listening in.

3. A mystery is solved due to information found in the detailed, truthful and specific diary of a teenaged girl who has gone missing. (eg. Mungo Park.) First, how many teenage girls keep diaries? A small percentage, I’d say. Second, how many girls write down specific and accurate details? Third, how many teenage girls manage to keep their diaries secret until their disappearance? I’d wager that most teenage girls who keep diaries don’t manage to keep them hidden from the rest of their families. The very time required to create a detailed account of one’s life means that other people will know about it.

Movies Based On Short Stories

The film Secretary (2002) is based on the short story of the same name in Bad Behavior by Mary Gaitskill, although the two have little in common, apparently.

Brokeback Mountain is based on the eponymous story by Annie Proulx. The movie is a fairly close adaptation of the story. This is one of my favourite films and one of my favourite short stories ever. Both are just masterful. If you love one but not the other, I highly recommend the other. It’s rare when an author can move you emotionally in such a short space of time. Normally for me that requires something of novel length.

The Bear Came Over The Mountain by Alice Munro was made into a movie called Away From Her. I really enjoyed both the short story and the film. As I watched the film, I imagined myself surrounded by 60 and 70 year old women at a boutique Arts Centre viewing. They’d all be going out for raspberry tea and eclairs afterwards to discuss it. It was that sort of film.

Similar in style to Away From Her is the film How About You?, based on the short story by Maeve Binchy, which I haven’t read. This is a Christmas film, ideally, with a theme straight out of Dickens: grumpy old people come good with the arrival of a feisty young upstart. As we go along, we get to know the grumpy old people better and we all come to some understanding… You know how it goes. By the end of the film the characters are all banding together against adversity – the health inspector who has come to shut the place down. But even he has a story… And is redeemed. This film is also about old people and ageing, but that is where the similarity begins and ends, because this one is full of cliche. It is similar to Away From Her also in the feel of it — it seems to be made for TV, with a television sized budget.

Million Dollar Baby (2004), directed by and starring Clint Eastwood. This movie is based on short stories by F.X. Toole, the pen name of fight manager and “cutman” Jerry Boyd. Originally published under the title Rope Burns, although the stories have since been republished under the film’s title. I haven’t read the short stories but the film is excellent.

Memento is a 2000 American psychological thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, adapted from his younger brother Jonathan’s short story “Memento Mori”. There was something not right about this film and I couldn’t sit through it. Yet it was recommended by a friend who loves it to pieces. So perhaps it’s one of those films that polarises its audience. Or perhaps a big brother director really wants to do something creative for his little brother, without the vision to see that his little brother’s short story isn’t necessarily great fodder for film.

The Fly (1986) is based on a film made in 1958, which was in turn based on a short story of the same name, written by George Langelaan. Nope, I’d not heard of him either. But he had an interesting life. Langelaan was a spy who had plastic surgery to alter his appearance, apparently. He wrote short stories on the side, of which The Fly is his best known. Jeff Goldblum has the best face for that role, though it’s possible I see him as a fly only because I saw him in the film. Shame, that. Still, that’s what the movie stars get paid for…

A.I. (Artificial Intelligence, 2001) is based on Brian Aldiss’ short story Super-Toys Last All Summer Long. I’ve not read the short story but I enjoyed the film.

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (2008) strikes me as a classic example of a good short story which didn’t work as a film. The pacing felt wrong to me. It is loosely based on the 1922 short story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

The Australian film Jindabyne (2006)was adapted from the Raymond Carver short story, So Much Water So Close to Home. For me, the film was better the second viewing. I’m still perplexed by its ending, but then those are the best kinds of endings sometimes. Perhaps if I were to read the short story I’d have that cleared up for me.

For a far more complete list of films based on short stories, see here, though the list includes novellas. I think novellas are in a category of their own.

Movie Review: Closer

Reading other reviews, this is a divisive film: some love it, some hate it, and few fall between.

At the end of watching I wanted to chuck something at the screen. I don’t like these kinds of storylines at all:

- An entire cast of pathetic characters who lie and thieve and can’t see their own double standards

- Stories in which characters are either all over each other or yelling

- Stories in which wholly unlikeable men get ‘the prize’ of a better woman than him

This last one if particularly offensive to me. Sure, this happens in real life, and vice versa. Understanding these things, I don’t want to be reminded of it in (so many) movies. I don’t want to go into that world.

That said, there are some very funny sequences. The online seduction between two men – one who thinks the other is a woman – is very funny, and not for the faint-hearted. I do think the film went downhill from there, and the ending did not satisfy. I’m no fan of neat, Hollywood endings, and that’s not at all what I hoped for. If it had been twenty minutes shorter it would have worked better for me. Then again, producers (and writers) can’t do a single thing about viewer identification.

This movie wasn’t made with the likes of me in mind. It’s good to see filmmakers push the boat out, try different story formats. Others got a lot more out of it than I did, for instance one viewer who left a review on imdb:

The digging, the struggling and the grasping is futile as no person can be reduced to a singular truth. We are an entirely different thing, practically a different animal, from moment to moment. As Natalie Portman’s character so perfectly illustrates by the end, even the most mundane details about who we are can turn out to be transitory or meaningless. That’s not a pretty area of human life to shine a light on but Mike Nichols does it and with an unflinching ability. If it’s a perspective you’re prepared to spend some time considering, Closer might just be the movie to get the ball rolling.

Dream Sequences

I love it when you dream about me. It means all that time I spend under your bed is paying off.

- @maureenjohnson

Several popular TV series have done a lot with dream sequences, notably Six Feet Under and The Sopranos. Did they start a trend, or was it there all along? Dream scenes are frequently used to accompany

• mental illness (Tony Soprano, depression)
• fever (Charles Darwin in Creation)
• drug induced psychosis (Nate/Ruth/David Fisher, Six Feet Under)
• tiredness (can’t think of an example right now)
• actual dreaming

And last night I saw Shutter Island, another recent film with a plot reliant upon dreaming.

The problem I had with this technique in Shutter Island was that I was never sure if I was watching a dream or the real thing. Interestingly, the directors of Six Feet Under love to trick the audience until we’re thinking, ‘Oh hang on, this isn’t real’, but I accepted it better in that.

I think the trick is to keep dream sequences short. If they drag on for too long, or occupy too much of total screen time, I begin to wonder what the point is. For me, watching someone else’s dream is about as interesting as hearing someone’s real life account of theirs. Ie, not very. Unless, of course, it was a really gruesome nightmare or a premonition that came true. Then I’m listening.

(Morbid cow, I hear you mutter.)

The other thing about dream sequences: They must mean something.

Dreams are used to:

• explore the subconscious
• include preternatural elements in an otherwise real-life drama
• spice up an otherwise dull story (not good)
• dish up back story (because a dream can be another kind of memory)
• explore alternative outcomes of plot
• function as a visual metaphor

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Have you ever had a premonition? Have you ever had a vivid dream which later came to fruition? Do you believe that dreams are symbolic of deeper thoughts and desires?

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As for the film, another good example of a Twist in the Tale. Don’t let anyone tell you the ending before you’ve watched it. (Not like the person who told me the end of Sixth Sense before I’d seen it. Still not over that. Grudge grudge.)

Movie Review: Creation

This was a story based on a few years of Charles Darwin’s life: the years when his daughter Annie was sick, when she died, and when Darwin himself was torn between offering up his work for publication or maintaining status quo for the benefit of his God fearing wife.

The story reminded me a little of A Beautiful Mind. It was never suggested that Darwin suffered mental illness. Though, for much of this movie, we are not sure how many scenes are real and how many take place only in Darwin’s delusional mind. This part is well-done.

That’s the thing about movies in which the main drama is psychological. It must be such a difficult thing to do. I think I may have seen one too many of these kinds of films. When Charles Darwin goes a bit mad and starts wrenching panels off the chicken house, I was thinking, Oh here we go, this is the big psychological climax. In a film, you can’t have internal conflict without some big violent/physical outworking or blazing row to finish it off.

What about in a novel? It’s got me thinking, certainly, about the novels I’ve read in which the conflict is mainly inside the viewpoint character’s head. Do we always need a real-world outworking in order for the story to feel complete? Does our madness have to result in thrashing ourselves against walls, waking up from nightmares, shouting aloud to imaginary characters… etc. etc?

There are rules to story telling and I wonder if that is one of them.

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What I appreciated about Creation was the grittiness. It seemed the actors didn’t wear make-up. If they did, it wasn’t to make them look more perfect.  The lighting, too, is stark and gritty. This is in keeping with the background story, of course: that there is nothing at all glamorous about our lives on this earth.

I can understand the need for creating unrealistic versions of humans in, say, a romance, because an audience watches a romance for escapism. I can understand the need for careful make-up and lighting in Pretty Woman, Mr and Mrs Smith, The Devil Wears Prada and so on. I did wonder if audiences are getting a little sick of the botoxed, unblemished, cosmetic sameness of actors now that most of us are watching their ‘airbrushed’ faces at home on the big screen. Will there be a movement back to raw and gritty? If so, it will start with this kind of film.

Creation is based on a true account (insofar as we can ever know what went on in Darwin’s mind, at least). So it is more appropriate to show people in their natural, close-up, gritty glory. Also, the theory of evolution itself is the unadorned, unromantic view of the world. To me, creationism is the Hollywood equivalent of a made-up romance – ‘made-up’ in both senses of the word. I’m so glad this movie was taken on by the Brits because it would have lost a lot had Hollywood got hold of it.

Little chance of that, though. Apparently Creation is ‘too controversial for religious America‘, and Hollywood movies are made, principally, to make lots of money. Can it really be true that only 39 percent of Americans believe in evolution? Surely not. That’s just too much for my credulity to handle. The more I hear about America, the more I feel the need to visit. I must have met a disproportionate number of educated and outward thinking Americans, simply because the ones I have met have all travelled outside their own country.

Apart from all that, I looked around the movie theatre last night and wondered how many in the audience believed in creationism and how many in evolution. No fights broke out. Everyone skulked out quietly, because Creation is basically a very sad film. I did feel, however, that in no way is the film anti-Christian. It is a more than a little close-minded to think that watching this film is going to shake your belief in an omnipotent power. Besides, what’s wrong with learning about what The Other believes? I wouldn’t be put off going to see a film made by the Taliban, for instance, worried that I’ll be personally corrupted and rush out to buy a burqa.

Movie Review: Broken Flowers

I can’t remember adding this one to my queue. I’m pretty sure it just jumped on there by accident, because neither the title nor the synopsis sounds very appealing to me:

As the devoutly single Don Johnston is dumped by his latest girlfriend, he receives an anonymous pink letter informing him that he has a son who may be looking for him. The situation causes Don to examine his relationships with women instead of moving on to the next one, and he embarks on a cross-country search for his old flames who might possess clues to the mystery at hand.

So, this is a chick-flick in other words (or has the term ‘chick-flick’ gone out of fashion, along with chick-lit?).

I did like the character of Winston. I recognised him so he made me laugh. Unfortunately he didn’t feature much after the set-up. The idea that each of Don Johnston’s lovers represent a particular stage of life is an interesting one, though visiting each in order felt a little contrived to me.

More on the downside:

The main mystery was never solved (nor was it left hanging in an intriguing kind of way); Bill Murray might as well have been a cardboard cutout (which would’ve been cheaper, I’m sure); the female characters sometimes behaved in inexplicable ways (esp. ‘Lolita’ – an unlikely allegorical name); an unconvincing plot; contrived ‘pink-herrings’. Finally, it felt SLOW. Just when I thought it was all over, no, it wasn’t. Then it ended all of a sudden and I thought, ‘Oh come on, is that it?’ I wasn’t left affected.

Do you know the technique I’m talking about? Long scenes where the main character sits staring into space; a cut to a significant glass of sparkling wine; many, many scenes where the character is driving in his car, staring straight ahead…

Why?

Well, this is a movie in which the main character is forced to confront his past. I can only assume the viewer is given long ‘pauses for thought‘ to give us time to consider where our former lovers may have ended up.

Junebug is another movie comprising long scenes of basically nothing. In that film, a father-in-law stands in a spare room pumping up an air bed. This works for me. In this case, the scene really wasn’t that long; it just felt long. In this case, the ‘scenes of nothing’ lent realism to the situation. I felt as though I were a fly-on-the-wall in that very ordinary Southern house rather than in a theatre, watching strangers on a screen.

I wonder if this same technique is used in novels. Sometimes I find I’ve read a page or two but taken nothing in, because a previous scene has made me think about something in my own life. Should I have paused for thought, or was the book designed like that, with a ‘nothing-scene’ immediately following a poignant one?

And do modern readers have any patience for scenes about nothing? I’ll keep an eye out.

Movie: The Year My Voice Broke

I knew nothing about this Australian film before I sat down to watch it, so I was surprised to see it’s an oldie. It was filmed in 1987 but set in the 1960s, and somehow, the fact it’s already over 20 years old makes the retro even more effectively retro… if that makes any sense.

Some of its young actors went on to a successful career in acting: Ben Mendelsohn – Beautiful Kate and appearances in almost every Aussie TV series. Noah Taylor – Shine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Vanilla Sky.

The great thing about this film is that it hasn’t really dated. The setting has, and the music, but not the themes. I really enjoyed it. (It was set around these parts, the Southern Tablelands of NSW.)

Movie: Black Water

Okay, okay! I’ll just pinch the promotional material instead, and upload directly from my own hard drive. (Get over yourselves.)

The Australian outback provides plenty of material for horror. This one’s about a killer croc. It’s very well done, going by the Head-Under-Doona criterion. I was certainly scared. And when the neighbour came over, rapping on the door to ask if we could feed his beagles over the weekend, I jumped three feet into the air.

I’m impressed what the producers did with a budget of a million dollars. That sounds like a lot of money until you consider the average Hollywood movie has a budget of a million per minute. It’s also amazing how those guys recreated the Northern Territory on the outskirts of Sydney.

Another great Aussie thriller is Wolf Creek. Like Wolf Creek, this one is supposedly ‘based on true events’. Or so it tells you as you start watching the film. What true events?  Take another look – at the DVD cover this time – and you’ll see it’s ‘inspired’ by true events. So which is it? It’s ‘inspired’, obviously, by the fact that people sometimes get eaten by crocs in the outback.

To me there is a difference, a significant difference between ‘based on’ and ‘inspired by’.

BASED ON

Something very similar actually happened. In this case, a man and two sisters get trapped up a tree in a mangrove swamp.

INSPIRED BY

Arguably, every story ever told has been inspired by something, even if it was only the author’s dream. This is a much safer word and not in the least misleading. I wish directors made more use of this term and less use of ‘based on’ because it feels to me like a deliberate attempt to con.

This is what the director (Andrew Traucki) has to say:

I wanted to make a horror/thriller. I was looking round for a good low budget idea. I watched Open Water and was impressed. I thought it was a good striped back horror-thriller that managed to do a lot with very little. When I saw how much it was made for I was really inspired. I thought damn they’ve done sharks what other big animal is there and then it struck me, Australia is home to the most dangerous reptile on earth, the Salt Water Crocodile. I started researching Aust croc attacks and it all came together.

from this interview

It looks to me not as if Black Water is ‘based on true events’, rather ‘inspired by someone else’s low budget film’, which is supposed to be based on true events. Come on, marketing gurus! Be honest with your audience, please.