Dumb Movie: ‘Smart People’

Recently I cancelled our Quickflix subscription. There are a lot of films on TV and they’re free. I have decided to watch a few of those.

Last week I recorded Smart People, and I think it was because:

1. I seem to be fascinated by stories about really clever people. See an earlier post: Films With Genius Nerds In.

2. I’ve enjoyed all of the films so far with Ellen Page in. (Juno, that roller derby one I can never remember the name of, and that one where she has revenge on an Internet paedophile.) Ellen Page is good in this film too — just as unpleasant as she needs to be.

3. Hell, there must’ve been a third reason. 

Overall, I was reminded of the film Sideways (2004) which I hated equally,despite its 7.7 rating on IMDb, and I’m sure its high rating is the only reason I watched that. (I trust the IMDb rating less and less. I need to find a prolific reviewer whose tastes match my own.)

Since I never seem to tire of moaning about this movie, despite watching it several years ago, Sideways is about two middle aged men who go on a road trip to a winery. Both of them are losers of the first order, but they do meet a couple of well-balanced, friendly women on their journey. By the end of the film, naturally (because women are sometimes like Chekhov’s gun, and need to be there for a reason), the more unpleasant of the two men has hooked up with one of the very pleasant and trusting women. I suspect the audience is supposed to feel happy about this, as we leave this story full of joy, uplifted for the future and the probable redemption of loser-man because he will most definitely be reformed by the nice, caring woman who was put on this earth to make his life better.

People don’t really change, though.

This is where I talk briefly about the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, spoofed brilliantly by a video at Cracked.com. Next, over at Feminist Frequency you will find a thorough and thoughtful explanation of The Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope in modern film. I say that post is excellent even though Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind happens to be one of my favourite films of all time. Again, the problem with this trope isn’t that it exists in the first place; rather, that it is so overdone.

Smart People (2008) is another Manic Pixie Dream Girl movie, though slightly less obviously so since the characters in this are older. Older characters are somewhat more jaded from the knocks they’ve endured in life but nevertheless, the woman will be far more balanced and sane than the male protagonist with whom she falls reluctantly in love.

In Smart People, it is Sarah Jessica Parker playing the ray of sunshine who comes into the life of Lawrence, a pompous curmudgeon of a literature professor.

I have discovered something about my own tastes of late: while I enjoy films in which a regular character makes his/her way through unusual circumstances, perhaps encountering difficult characters along the way, I really don’t like films in which we are stuck with an unpleasant protagonist negotiating his/her way through (what should be) fairly ordinary circumstances. I don’t mind so much when unpleasant characters get their comeuppance. But so often they don’t. They are redeemed. By finding new love in their lives.

There is nothing likeable about the long-time widowed Lawrence (Dennis Quaid), though I suppose some viewers may appreciate the way he is rude to people in general. I can find rudeness funny, but only if it’s what I’d like to say to unpleasant people, but don’t. In this case, the rudeness of Lawrence is unjustified, which borders on cringe comedy. I don’t like cringe. I don’t like to see innocent people crushed for no reason, with no comeback, unless they’re killed brutally, of course, which is why I love No Country For Old Men.

Lawrence Wetherhold is such an unpleasant character that after insulting a parking warden he tries to climb over a high fence to retrieve a briefcase which is locked inside his car, which has been impounded. He falls.

In hospital he meets a great catch of a woman by any standards, because Janet (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) plays a single woman in her thirties, who happens to be an attractive (insert predictable horse joke), level-headed, smart ER doctor, who manages to be friendly even in the face of boldfaced rudeness from Lawrence and his very intelligent but emotionally stunted daughter (Page).

Predictably, Lawrence and Janet do not hit it off at first, but in their first scene together they are depicted to have something in common (word-wit and a love of language), so we know, without a doubt, that these two are going to be together by the end of the film, and that Lawrence is going to be improved and cheered by this new woman in his life.

I’m not sure it works the other way around. Because the plot really, really falls apart for me when first, a grown man can’t figure out how to work a condom, and two, when a woman who is obviously in her late thirties (and long past her peak fertile years) happens to fall pregnant after a single rubber malfunction. Not only that, but it doesn’t cross her mind to make use of an emergency contraceptive, despite the fact that she is a medical professional. (I’m sure the frequency of this plot point in films contributes to The Yoga Effect.)

When smart women do dumb things in movies, I sigh. But for every Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope there is the male equivalent — a sad sack of a man who can’t pull his own way out of the doldrums. I wonder if male viewers are getting equally tired of seeing him? I mean, men are more capable than movies make them out to be sometimes.

Of course, this is what the film Smart People is about: smart people doing dumb things or, more frequently, really unpleasant things. The smart man does the unpleasant things; the smart woman does the dumb things. This doesn’t ring true because it’s the smart woman in this story who has all the most intelligent and insightful lines.

In real life, too, smart people do screw up. I recently listened to a Freaknomics podcast about this issue, transcript here, in which Stephen Greenspan talks about how he lost a lot of money to a Ponzi scheme despite the fact that he is an economist with the specialty of ‘social incompetence’. 

Perhaps this smart-people-dumb-things storyline is just one of those situations that happens in real life but which, for me, does not make for a satisfying plot.

MOVIE REVIEW: HALLOWE’EN HUNTSMAN

Note: This is a movie review parody, using every film-criticky word I could think of, as listed previously.

Double Note: This isn’t a real movie. It’s a movie I imagined up, based on my latest short story to be published in Eclectizine (December 2011), which was actually a Hallowe’en edition, but came out at Christmas. Better late than never. Hallowe’en will roll around again next year, right on time. (Unless our Mr Harold Camping was just a little bit off in his otherwise sound and logical prediction of Armageddon.)

Good But Flawed

“Hallowe’en Huntsman” is the bold, much anticipated feature debut from astonishing young director Swereterd Madtete*. Viewers will cheer at this rare attempt at a laugh-out-loud black romantic comedy, as lavish as it is intriguing, which leads its audience to a gripping climax of regret and longing. In this unflinching look at what it means to be a lonely suburban actuary, we trace the elegaic evolution of a memorable man — allegorically named Norman — played by the masterful Russell Crowe. With unexpected realism, make-up artists have ensured that Crowe indeed bears an uncanny resemblance to a huntsman spider. This is Crowe at the peak of his powers, with another nuanced and magisterial top-notch performance.

Framing this story is a series of deeply contrived letters to Marjorie (the ethereal Cate Blanchett) – a woman Norman knows only via their shared correspondence. As the pair hope to meet in person, another startling murder comes between them.

The danger in having a well-known thespian appear in this sort of part is that the performer never becomes buried in the character. Nevertheless, this is a pitch-perfect performance from a necessarily lyrical muse of the silver screen.

Rarely does a film seem more obviously a collaboration of love between a director and his production designer. Smart and saucy set design is complemented by frightenly evocative costume choices.

The film has lofty aspirations, but never fails to be accessible. The storyline occasionally flashes back to a young Norman, in which his mother is central to his life, praising him for his smarts but offering harsh criticism of his unfortunate appearance. Whilst these engaging flashbacks achieve a gritty atmosphere, the “modern day” Norman scenes are unremarkable except in that the layered photographic composition remains outstanding.

The most controversial element of “Hallowe’en Huntsman” is the special effects-laden speculation about the guilt of the protagonist. In compelling flashbacks which weave into the present, the viewer is drawn into Norman’s sorry life of tumultuous invisibility. These flashbacks, however, fail to be fully-realised, and interfere at times with the present.

With moments of rollicking hilarity, interwoven with scenes of the middle-aged suburban underworld, it is after several poignant opening scenes that “Midsomer Murders” meets “Wallace and Gromit”. After yet another suspicious death of a local elderly woman, an identikit picture is released by police. It bears a striking resemblance to our antihero.

Few living filmmakers pay as much attention to cinematography and music.  Deceptively simply melodies culminate into crescendos charged with schadenfreude. “Hallowe’en Huntsman” has awe-inspiring visuals which achieve the lofty goal of encouraging the audience to really feel the power of loss and redemption.

After being drawn into this gritty, deeply satisfying and layered existence, the audience is asked to eschew what it means to be alone in this world, and reach instead for a less contrived version of humanity.

The film’s coda is one of hope, acknowledging the beauty and joy in small things. The audience is haunted by this devastating parable about a lonely old man locked in a cell for all eternity.

Some reviews have said that “Hallowe’en  Huntsman” falls short of masterful. Its harshest detractors say that the film is almost exactly as pretentious and unwittingly absurd as it is powerful, provocative and realistic. Nevertheless, the savvy filmgoer is likely to be riveted at this searing insight into solitude. Such directorial risks are timely, in a climate of superhero remakes, sequels and safe bets.

There is no doubt that with a running time 569 minutes, the scripting could have been more taut. Its greatest strength is its greatest flaw. But this is a witty, sumptuous and riveting feast for those who like their roller-coaster rides epic. The overall impression one has of the film is that it’s breathtakingly beautiful and luminously potent. The stunning Swereterd Madtete is an unexpected tour de force. What more can we ask from the work of this utterly majestically poetic director, who can only get better as she continues to learn her craft?

*Name changed to protect the non-existent

Phew! That was actually pretty hard! But fun. And deliciously procastinatory.

This Parallel Universe

Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

- Sir Arthur Eddington

I’m also baffled by all if you who RT those meaningless, twee sayings – ‘think of today as merely a thousand yesterdays’. Go boil your head!

- @realmattlucas

A while back I watched the movie Sliding Doors. I don’t know why I watched Sliding Doors. Oh, that’s right: it happened to be on TV and I had recently fallen in love with a novel which many people on Goodreads compared to this movie, which I missed when it came out in 1998. Dunno about you, but 1998 doesn’t seem that long ago to me. Unfortunately the film has dated.

So, like my Star Wars experience, I watched it because everyone else seems to know it and because (to a lesser extent) the story has made its way into pop culture.

Sliding Doors relies on stock characters, has an annoying love interest with verbal diarrhea (which is supposed to be charming) and is full of characters I didn’t like. Gwyneth Paltrow is better, I feel, when cast as a stand-offish, aloof sort of woman, not as an Everygirl. I liked her in Proof, for instance, where she played a mathematician.

I do wonder why an American actress is employed to play the part of a British woman. Could they not find any British actresses in Britain? I’d be interested to know what native Brits think of her accent. It annoyed the hell out of me. She seemed to be slipping uncomfortably between received pronunciation and some sort of mild Cockney. I’ve noticed this in a number of bad, faux-British accents. And I’m not even British.

Still, I was interested enough in the ‘parallel universe’ structure to watch until… yawn… almost to the end, when I zoned out and now I’ll never know what happened but oh well.

The CONCEPT is a fascinating one: Small decisions have large consequences.

So I’d rather talk about the novel I fell in love with, which makes use of a very similar structure: The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver.

Sure enough, like Sliding Doors, this story  takes a character down two different paths depending upon a small decision she makes. There are two of each chapter (minus the first and last – bookends): a ‘dark’ and a ‘light’ chapter. The novel is engaging, well-written, original and thought-provoking. I really enjoyed it. (That said, I gave the novel to a mate and she hated it.)

INFINITY

I am trying to get my head around the idea that, given an infinite amount of time and an infinite amount of space, this exact same world will exist, and has existed, somewhere else.

At some time, somewhere, a person just like you has sat there at your computer (or phone, or tablet) as you read this blog post. That person looks exactly like you, sounds exactly like you and even has the same thoughts and memories as you do. Except they’re wearing a yellow hat with a feather in it.

That, I’m the first to admit, sounds EXACTLY like science fiction, but if you’re to believe what that man Einstein said, and the current thinking in astrophysics, you kind of have to believe it. Infinity is such a difficult concept to get our human heads around, but if the universe is indeed infinite in time, and possibly space, then this world has existed before and will exist again.

In fact, within the laws of physics, every possible history will eventually play out. I hope that next time I’m sat here I won’t have cold toes, and that I’ll be drinking something a little more exciting than tank water. At some point I’ll even look exactly like Gwyneth Paltrow, and hey, so will you!

MY FAVOURITE SCIENCE WRITER

If this sort of thing interests you, I highly recommend The Never-Ending Days of Being Dead by Marcus Chown.

Marcus Chown writes about complicated stuff in an easy-to-read style. The first chapter — Elvis Lives — begins thusly:

Far, far away, in a galaxy with a remarkable resemblance to the Milky Way, sits a star that looks remarkably like the Sun. And on the star’s third plant, which looks remarkably like Earth, lives someone who, for all the world, looks like your identical twin…

Doesn’t that make you want to read on? My copy is full of post-it notes. I don’t know why I write questions to myself in books, as if someone’s going to magically appear and answer them for me but hey-ho…

If you can’t get your hands on Chown’s books, here’s an interview between Chown and Kim Hill: one of my favourite interviews of all time. I’ve listened to it several times over the past few years. (Still, my brain hurts.)

Which leads me to my final point

That’s what novels and poems and movies are for, isn’t it. Stories exist to let us imagine our own lives in an alternative* universe.

*I often hear the phrase ‘alternate universe’ which annoys the pedant in me, because the word ‘alternate’ suggests there are only TWO possible worlds, when there are many many many.

Ever since I sort-of  kind-of got my head around this idea of infinity I’m struck by the idea, when reading fiction, that somewhere, at some time, characters like this actually existed (or will exist), many times over and they spoke those exact words, oftentimes in a completely different language. 

If that doesn’t work to heighten your experience of fiction then I’ll eat your yellow feathered hat.

Related Links: There’s a 20 Percent Chance We Live In A Simulated World; Popular Science: an Introduction in 5 Books; Fantasy, Science Fiction and the Many Worlds Theory from Shevi Arnold.

The 10pm Question by Kate de Goldi

I love this cover. One big image, interesting texture in the background and handrawn-looking text.

In every junior high school class there is a boy — and if he’s very lucky, he’ll have a partner in crime — who is sensitive, intelligent, nerdy and innocent, even beyond his years. He cares deeply about his family and things affect him.

This is Kate de Goldi’s main character, Frankie Parsons, who asks his mother a deeply troublesome question every night at bedtime. You may know a Frankie yourself. He has a love of words, and has even made up a secret language with his best friend (the language is called Chilun) and he hears a constant ‘rodent voice’ which annoys him constantly by rattling away in his head about his daily worries. If you’re familiar with Kate de Goldi’s (actual) voice from her Radio New Zealand slot on Saturday Morning With Kim Hill, you’ll recognise her sense of humour in Frankie and you’ll also recognise that Frankie shares de Goldi’s love of language and literature.

I highly recommend de Goldi’s children’s book talks — you won’t find a more enthusiastic  or articulate proponent of fiction for younger readers.

The 10pm Question is set in contemporary New Zealand rather than in 1970s North America, but reminds me of a Judy Blume novel. Blume also wrote a number of books which were a snapshot of one developmental stage in a teenager’s life. This novel begins almost as abruptly as it begins; we’re plunged straight in and pulled straight out of Frankie’s life, with the assumption that his life will continue, even after we readers have lost our hole-in-the-wall view of it.

Also, as in many of Judy Blume’s novels, Kate de Goldi’s Frankie Parsons struggles to reconcile family issues (illness — mental illness in this case), with problems in his own world of school and peer relationships.

Unlike many of Blume’s characters, Frankie has not yet reached the stage where he is confronted by his sexuality; the relationship between Frankie and Sydney is a platonic one.

At Frankie’s stage of maturity, he hasn’t quite got past the earwax and bogey stage, though by the end of the book he has started to move away from this and into another phase of his life, where a bf/gf sort of relationship with Sydney may or may not be on his mind.

The 10pm Question has recently been included on an American list of Outstanding International Books for children grades 6-8. And thoroughly deserves to be there.

On Smiling

I was once thrown out of a mental hospital for depressing the other patients.

- OSCAR LEVANT

Sometimes by coincidence you end up reading two books of a similar theme. Or perhaps, because you read the first one, you noticed corresponding themes in the next one that might have otherwise washed right over you.

Last week I read two books:

Peeling the Onion by Wendy Orr, an Australian YA novel, published 1996.

Smile or Die by Barbara Ehrenreich.

This is an American polemic about the incessant pressure to display a positive attitude, and the detrimental effect this requirement can have on the seriously ill, the job-seeking and on the entire world economy. I first heard about this book because of an author interview with Kim Hill on Radio New Zealand: The Cult of Cheerfulness. A fascinating listen. (Two astute and articulate older women in one interview. What more could you ask for?)

The theme of unreasonable positivity was echoed in the novel by Wendy Orr. Peeling The Onion, is about a 17 year old girl who is recovering from a car-crash, which wasn’t her fault. She was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Another driver failed to give way, and she was ‘lucky’ not to break her neck. Although she will be permanently impaired, everyone keeps telling her how lucky she is to be alive. This, quite rightly, gets on her wick.

Jenny comes around with a stack of books from her mum: self-healing; do it yourself miracles. I flip through the first one: meditation; understanding your motives for not being well - motives? What kind of motive could you have for pain?

‘Everything that happens, happens for a reason,’ I read. ‘Nothing is an accident’.

So what the hell would you call it?

pp 117-118

Speaking of self-help books, The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne, was not published until 2006, but Wendy Orr must have seen this wave of Australian self-help positivity coming, from as far back as the mid-nineties as she was writing.

I find these themes really interesting. To what extent should anyone be grateful for what they have? Perhaps one role of prayer (whether you’re religious or not) is to count ‘blessings’ before they evaporate. (Because all blessings are ephemeral – as life itself.) But I’ve always been wary of what I say to someone who has had a spectacular stroke of misfortune. I try not to say ‘Well, it could have been worse.’ There are a whole list of ways in which something could have been worse. ‘You could be dead, for instance’.

Well, that’s never helpful, is it. And who says death is the very worst outcome? Don’t know until you try it. I suspect there are fates worse than death.

Another interesting RNZ interview: Richard Wiseman, author of 59 Seconds: Think a little, change a lot.

That one’s next on my non-fiction reading list.

SPEAKING OF SMILING

pic by Anemone Riot

Do you know what your face looks like when you’re thinking of nothing at all? Has anyone ever told you?

I’ve been told.

I’ve done several teacher training courses, where trainees are critiqued on everything from posture and enunciation to eye-brow raising, dress sense and whiteboard legibility. So, I have been told that when I’m deep in thought – and feeling neither happy nor sad – I look ‘bored’. This, apparently, is a bad thing and needs to be remedied.

Use a slight smile instead of a poker face. You’ll get further in this life. But if anyone else tells me it’s easier to smile than to look bored, I’ll slap them upside the head. I can tell you for a fact, it takes no effort whatsoever to look bored. Smiling is work. I have also done my time in the service industry, and I remember sore facial muscles after a long hard day of friendly customer service. I always wanted a job where I didn’t have to smile like a vacant fool. (Teaching, alas, is not one of those jobs. I remember sore smiling muscles after parent-teacher interview evenings.)

But, fortunately for me, my first boss felt the same way I did about this smiling matter, which may well be how I got a job in the first place.

My opinion is this: If a teacher strolls about the school grounds smiling, students know the exact moment the teacher’s mood turns. And moods do turn. Better to look permanently neutral and express emotion via words and other body language than to rely entirely upon the facial expression. You don’t want your most difficult high school class to know that exact moment you got angry. You don’t want them to know what sets you off.

Surely that applies in any work place. As much as I wish I were one of those fortunate people with naturally upturned lips, I’ll probably develop a furrowed brow and the permanent stink-eye as I age disgracefully. Thank god for the Barbara Ehrenreichs of this world.

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

- Kahlil Gibran

Though I’m far from jolly, I suppose I feel, as I suspect many people do, that they have both had less than their due, but more than they deserve, and always, in my case, a lot of luck. These would nowadays, I suppose, be called ‘positive feelings’, the sort one is supposed to try and generate in ‘the battle against cancer’.

- Alan Bennett, Ups and Downs, Untold Stories

Related Links: Can You Imagine Cancer Away? from CNN Health; More Bad News For The Depressed from The Awl, The Optimism Bias from Time; Thoughts On Living With An Optimist from Persephone Magazine.

“Laugh as much as you choose, but you will not laugh me out of my opinion.”

— Jane Austen

Today I Read My First Digital Newspaper

And it wasn’t that good.

pic by zandwacht

Do you remember the first time you went on the internet? I don’t.

Why is that? Anyone would think that would be a significant moment in the life of a 21st century human living in the West. Fifteen years on and I can’t imagine life without the net. I guess it must have been one of those gradual love affairs that creeps up on you, which only became passionate once I switched from super-slow dial-up to super-fast broadband. (ie. Once I moved out of New Zealand.) Web 2.0 certainly helped. I haven’t visited a website designed with Frontpage in quite a while now. Thank you, Dreamweaver. Thank you, css.

However. 2010 will remain etched in my memory as the year I felt really connected to the world.

1. For better or worse, I have as much meaningful interaction with people online as I do in real life, with a subgroup of never-met-befores who share more of my own personal set of interests and ideologies than those I happen to meet because I have coincidentally purchased a house nearby.
2. The internet provides me with the ability to create and share in a way nothing else really can.
3. I realised that when I’m dead and gone, my digital footprints will be here long after my gravestone has been converted to council flats.
4. Despite an enforced tutorial on Twitter at work in 2007, I finally got what Twitter is all about, and why people might waste spend time doing it.
5. I can listen to internet radio, from all over the world.
6. I’ve interacted (albeit briefly) with real live famous people. I can see what my favourite authors are doing. (Having breakfast, often, when I’m having mine. Also a lot of slogging away and general perspiration. They’re quite moody too, some of them.)
7. I got an iPad.

And right now, The Age – a major newspaper in Victoria, Australia – is promoting its online edition by offering 30 days free trial to iPad subscribers. I don’t live in Melbourne anymore, but I’ve wondered how it would feel to read a traditional broadsheet on a widdle teensy screen, so today is day one of my free trial.

But first.

What annoys me about actual paper newspapers, and why I stopped subscribing to one last year.

1. Broadsheets are too big, and are no good at all unless you’re sitting – on your own – at a decent sized table.
2. You actually have to go out and buy one. Even if it gets chucked onto your driveway in the early morning, you have to go outside and get it. At the risk of sounding like the ultimate lazy bastard, this really sux in the winter time when there’s a white frost. (It also sux in the summer time because whenever I open the door at least one fly finds its way inside.) Home deliveries also need to be suspended when you go away for a short holiday, and then there are days when the delivery guy forgets to stop by your house. (My brain doesn’t work well either, at half past four in the morning, so no blame apportioned there.)
3. They fold badly. The people who design broadsheet layouts take no account of how people might fold them while reading. How many years have newspapers existed? And still, still, I find myself reading an article with the newspaper folded in quarters, squinting to make out the morphed type on the fold, flipping the paper over in my hands to read the same article further down, and back again when they start a new column up top. That is what I call an unnecessary nuisance. I much prefer tabloid sized papers, and I don’t understand why broadsheet publishers don’t just switch to tabloid sized pages for reader convenience. I think it must be the unwanted association with trashy news.
4. The environment. I’m only ever interested in two sections of a newspaper: The first section, with major news and opinion, and the entertainment guide. I don’t understand why the motoring section is so thick when the only people who could possibly be interested enough to create that much extra waste for the environment are those who actually want to buy a car. Ditto the real estate section and, for me, the sports section can be mulched as well. I have not once ever read the sports section of any newspaper, despite my heritage as an emigre from New-Rugby-Zealand to the land of Aus-AFL-Stralia.
5. Black fingers. Or for me, more often, black stripes just above the elbows, and a matching black streak somewhere on the face – invisible in the bathroom mirror but striking and bold under any other conditions.
6. Collecting them all up in a bundle for recycling day. Though I must say the house always looks significantly tidier after a two weeks’ worth of papers have been removed.
7. Increasingly chatty and inaccurate journalism which makes me wonder why I don’t just read all those blogs I’m subscribed to. If I’m going to read people’s opinions, I’m just as likely to find thought-provoking editorials online, for free. Broadsheet papers in this country seem to have settled for a spot somewhere between tabloid and broadsheet and, as far as I’m concerned, if newspapers are going to abandon serious journalism and fail to employ only the very best journalists, they may as well give up now.
8. Much of what I read in the paper, I’ve already read online. Sometimes the lag is several months, especially when it comes to human interest stories, or health research, or scientific breakthroughs, which must be kept in a separate file called ‘Annoying Gaps’.
9. Someone always wants a section. And if I don’t give it them, they make a nuisance of themselves by reading over my shoulder, or asking me why I just sniggered, or if I gave them a different section, they’ll ask me my opinion while I’m reading my own section. Basically, newspaper reading is not a social activity, but the act of holding a newspaper sends a message out to the world that you’re informed enough to want a discussion about that front page news you’re holding in front of your face. (Perhaps I shouldn’t be so harsh on the unwieldy size of the broadsheet, which is pretty darn good at hiding the identify of a reader.)
10. You can’t read a newspaper outside when it’s windy.

Thoughts On The Digital Newspaper

What’s the point?

What’s the point in a digital newspaper when The Age newspaper app looks like a crappy low-res, non-interactive image of the broadsheet itself? If you click on a heading you’re taken to a new window with less blurry print and formatting issues (lack of spaces.) But you can’t see the cartoons or the pictures this way.

When I first got the iPad (two weeks ago), it was pretty cool, doing that thing with your fingers, zooming in, zooming out, pinching. Well, the novelty wears off. Now, I ask Why? Why would a news app make readers do that, when we could be taking advantage of all the internet has to offer regarding interactivity and accessibility?

Flipboard is a wonderful example of an interactive, good-looking newspaper type thingo. It aggregates a whole lot of your favourite feeds, from Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader etc and somehow turns them into a lovely looking colour magazine, which makes the most of the beautiful iPad screen. You don’t have to scroll. You swipe to turn a page. That makes all the difference to me.

Newspapers would be smart to get in on that, and create their own products in similar fashion. Aren’t we all used to news feeds by now? Your paid news should be just another feed.

Instead, the nuisance of folding has been replaced by the nuisance of scrolling, and what’s more, I couldn’t turn the page in The (Digital) Age without zooming right back out to full size (and text on a full-page view is too small and blurry to be readable, by the way).

The other thing I noticed about the need to zoom in, is that I don’t. I have to be really interested in the subheading to want to zoom in. I know it sounds lazy, but that’s how it was. I realised that my normal method of reading a paper is to read the headlines, then the first few sentences of an article to see if it captures my attention. That’s why, in journalistic writing, the most salient points come first. Newspapers are meant to be read like that. Since The Age app requires constant zooming in, zooming out and scrolling, I ended up reading less.

And how to do the crossword? You can’t, not until they get their act together and employ programmers to create a digital version of their games page. They haven’t. If they expect consumers to make the switch, they’ve got a long way to go.

They also need to partner up with sister media companies to embed video and photo galleries, and hashtags and search terms and dictionaries and encyclopedias. They need links to similar articles. In short, newspapers could learn from blogs.

They could also take a few pointers from Google, by linking their stories to maps and street views and webcams. They need to provide commenting capability on articles in some invisible extra layer that readers can turn on and off. They need polls and worms and like buttons, and all of the other things that make the internet so interactive.

Hell, why am I saying all this? Newspapers just need to go online, with a pretty app for mobile reading devices. Until they get their act together, I’m not paying for no stinking broadsheet on iPad.

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.

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.