“The Martian”: Vacuous in Space

Posted on December 15, 2015 by McPhedran

The idea behind Ridley Scott’s The Martian could be intriguing: What if someone were to be stranded alone on a distant planet? As unoriginal as the premise is – a sci-fi staple often used countless Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits episodes – it still has the potential of the vast unknown. However that potential is quickly wasted in The Martian as it can never rise above a tedious salute to American ingenuity, what eventually becomes a mind-numbingly extended episode of MacGyver.

The script is an abomination, the Chief of NASA actually saying “…if nothing goes wrong” right before…something goes wrong. Character development is non-existent, and not a single word is invested into the psychology of being abandoned in space, excepting the long zoom-ins of everyone becoming more empathetic. It’s astounding that $108 million can be dumped into such a meaningless and vacuous project, and then go on to earn close to $600 million; Ridley Scott hoodwinked us again. Which makes me wonder when his Alien/Blade Runner credentials will finally run out.

Mikhail Kalatozov’s “The Cranes Are Flying”

Posted on December 14, 2015 by McPhedran

Mikhail Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying is a remarkable piece of film-making. Made in 1957, Mikhail Kalatozov guides the camera in perpetual flight, rising, drifting, gliding along with the story, leading the characters through their dreams and lives. As melo-dramatic as the narrative may be, the technical elements, the self-awareness of the camera and the theory of film-making, all of it before France’s Nouveau Vague, are astonishing, like a supreme being playing with a camera and showing us simpletons just what is possible. Cinema not only as art, but of our very dreams.

San Andreas: Bastardizing Collective Trauma

Posted on December 2, 2015 by McPhedran

I recently used a long flight to catch up on my bad movie viewing and so settled back to daydream through the summer blockbuster San Andreas. I admit to having been initially interested in the movie, having been, as a child, very keen on the 1975 film Earthquake, complete with Surround Sound. And while there were certain similarities between San Andreas and Earthquake – and every other disaster movie ever made, with its vapid focus on collapsing things, screaming people and heroes impossibly triumphing through it all – this film is almost solely derived from images of our mass-media natural disaster consciousness, The 911 Attacks in New York and Thailand’s 2004 Tsunami most of all. These traumatically ingrained images have been transformed into moments of cartoonish fun, which years ago would have been blasphemous and now are just a vehicle to profits. Kind of like the manner in which we cope with global warming – something to spin and from which to derive short-term profit.

Never-Ending Persecution, as Seen in “Trumbo”

Posted on November 30, 2015 by McPhedran

Jay Roach’s Trumbo addresses the pathetic post-WW II days of Hollywood when fatuous tools like Ronald Reagan, Roy Rogers and Hedda Hopper jumped on the persecution bandwagon to further their own careers and destroy the lives of anyone who was whispered to be a Communist. The film ends triumphantly with the sage words of Dalton Trumbo: There was bad faith and good, honesty and dishonesty, courage and cowardice, selflessness and opportunism, wisdom and stupidity, good and bad on both sides.

If only there was a lesson to be learned, for the persecution to cease. And yet, the Reagans (Jeb Bush & Co.) and Hoppers (Megyn Kelly et al.) remain the same, firmly entrenched.

They spout their vitriol about any and everyone – Syrian refugees, Latin American immigrants, homosexuals – anyone from anywhere but within their xenophobic, misogynistic picturesque homes – and smile like they might be a friend when they themselves remain the villainy who should be expunged.

Returning Home: A Movie

Posted on November 10, 2015 by McPhedran

Mike told me to make a movie. And so I did. (Click here to see the film!)It’s about the return home. That constant.That cycle. And pause. That feeling of return. From where we left. To where we began.

The Barbapapas vs. The New Shmoo

Posted on October 14, 2015 by McPhedran

Two cartoons for which I have an odd sentimentality had a similar protagonist and yet were at polar extremes.

The New Shmoo featured a squeaky transforming blob that led a group of teens on mysterious adventures – one of many Scooby Doo derivatives.

The Barbapapas were blobs as well, but pink and but did not follow such inane narratives, instead offering a simpler child-like perspective on solving environmental problems.
I was loyal to both, passively thinking they were somehow affiliated. The truth is that The New Shmoo and Barbapapas were just a blip in pop culture, like a girl-cop buddy show.

The Contradictions of Being Pope Francis

Posted on September 27, 2015 by McPhedran

Pope Francis has offered words of caring and understanding throughout his world tour.However in spite of his peaceful persona, he still represents an organization that has repressed and misled billions of people for almost two thousand years, maintaining backward views on social issues, most notably equal rights and contraception. In other words, it doesn’t matter how much he smiles and waves; he’s still just the head of a conglomerate that owns too much and answers to no one.

To put it in the words of Monk Gasper de Carvajal of Aguirre, Wrath of God: The church will always side with the strong.

Raymond Carver & The Bachelor

Posted on June 26, 2015 by McPhedran

Readers of this blog may have noticed an odd confluence of reflections on Raymond Carver as well as various citations from the television show The Bachelor. It is possible, Carver wrote, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things – a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring – with immense startling power. It is possible, he continued, to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader’s spine.

Like Carver wrote about commonplace things with commonplace language, The Bachelor presents commonplace sexual relationship with the same innocuous, albeit redundant, zeal. This is not to imply that the producers of The Bachelor do any of this knowingly – or indeed with any craft – but that the participants, like Carver’s lost and lonely characters, surrender themselves to the process, seemingly unaware of how stupid and damned their lives must be.

Kubrick and Weir: The Laudatory Human Condition

Posted on May 24, 2015 by McPhedran

Filmmaker Stanley Kubrick has been praised as a great filmmaker and artist, one who probes the shades of humanity in such great films as Lolita, 2001: A Space Odyssey and Barry Lyndon. Bob Weir, not as highly praised, is certainly recognized for “chasing the music” as he says, on his 50-year journey as rhythm guitarist with The Grateful Dead. And so I was intrigued to watch documentaries on each man this weekend to perhaps gain an insight or two through understanding their trials and tribulations.

It was not to be.Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures (2007) offers brief moments of filmic analysis amidst a tidal wave of laudatory praise, Steven Spielberg gushing, “He was a conceptual illustrator of the human condition”. And so despite a 50-year career, we are left with the trite summation that Mr. Kubrick worked terribly hard and loved his family, little else.

The Other One: The Long Strange Trip of Bob Weir (2013) is worse. While some fellow musicians offer comments on Bob Weir’s work, the documentary is almost solely guided by bland recollections by Weir – “Here’s my Jerry Bobbblehead” – occasionally, boyishly and evasively hinting toward his notorious off-stage reputation. His band mates are only briefly interviewed, likewise alluding, saying little else. It’s a shame that both of these these documentaries offered so little, not that they should focus on personal scandal, but that they veered so very far from the very same human condition that these men had endeavored to understand and instead settled on empty praise.

The Right Thing in Baltimore (and Everywhere) is Change

Posted on April 30, 2015 by McPhedran

Events unfolded this week in Baltimore almost exactly as they were played out in Spike Lee’s 1989 film Do the Right Thing. A black man was killed in custody. And black people rioted. When will there ever be any real change? This doesn’t have to be a rhetorical question. Democracy is supposed to address issues of social justice. New leaders need to be elected – what about a new political party? – laws passed, and change should follow.

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