In Spike Jonze’s new film Her, people are profoundly asocial, lost in their search for happiness and understanding in the digital world.
The concrete differences from our world to this not-too-distant future are pants which are worn high above the waist and operating systems (OS) that have been successfully programmed to have human characteristics, including empathy and love. 
Jonze makes many interesting decisions in this film, including keeping the OS as a voice (no virtual babes) and allowing the OS to evolve as a distinct entity which we, as humans, eventually cannot understand, an idea reminiscent of the cognitive planet offered in Stanilslaw Lem’s Solaris. 
This thoughtful science fiction piece is well worth seeing not only because it posits an imminent future that is neither doomed nor delightful but also to see a futuristic video game that doesn’t involve killing everyone and actually looks fun to play.
Category Archives: film
Neil Young Plays. Nobody Listens.
Neil Young battled the audience at New York’s Carnegie Hall last night. Time and again, he had to ask them to stop yelling out between songs. “You guys finished? No? You paid real good money to get in here, so you should be able to listen to each other.” Neither did they listen to the ushers telling them not to take pictures, flashes going off in all corners, guaranteeing each and everyone a personalized blurred memento.
Neil Young’s stage at Carnegie Hall
It’s a common disease, not being able to listen, our self-centered world only getting worse. As Laetitia Sadier sings in Stereolab’s The Seeming and Meaning:
We communicate more and more
In more defined ways than ever before
But no one has got anything to say
It’s all very poor it’s all just a bore
Paolo Sorrentini’s La Grande Bellezza, although a somewhat tedious film, does offer one character, a poet, who says nothing. Explains the protagonist. “He’s an excellent listener.”
La Grande Bellezza
It’s something to aspire towards.
American Hustled
American Hustle is a con. I don’t mean the film is about a con – which it is – but that it’s a con of a movie. 
Promising a story with actual characters and plot, it’s a meander through moments, some of them okay, that are glued together by obsessively iconic ’70s music and deep cleavage.
Christian Bales’s performance is wasted as are some intriguing scene with Jennifer Lawrence. Much better con movies have been made, including The Sting (1973) and The Spanish Prisoner (1997).
These films have an actual plot and don’t bludgeon you to death with vacuous morality at the end. So see them instead.
24/7 of Cliche and Profanity
The idea of HBO’s sports documentary 24/7 is enticing to hockey fans – especially those of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Detroit Red Wings. 
Advertised as an inside look at each team’s personnel as they prepare for the Winter Classic, the show promises to offer insights into the people who will play in the big game.
The payoff is disappointing, offering little more than vacuous reflections on what it is to play for “a storied franchise” and boys pretending to be grownups, driving fancy cars and wearing fine clothes. And there’s a whole fucking bunch of swearing. 
They have that vocabulary in common with the coaches. Instead of details on strategy, style or even on their personalities, it’s a lot of “Let’s (fucking) go, boys!” 
It’s not that much should be expected of these characters in this format – they are hockey player after all – but HBO could certainly do less of the epic music and close-ups of skates and actually make an effort to tell a (fucking) story.
Aspiring to the Enigmatic: Five Film Scenes
Advertisers want to give us answers, all of our confusion beaten into sell-able pulp.
Christian Dior selling purses.
Movie trailers are the same.
Baz Luhrman’s “The Great Gatsby”
All of it so simple and pornographically direct. 
The failure is in their intent, attempting to answer everything, give our lives a clear, cohesive narrative, when it is just the opposite.
Spike Jonze’s “Being John Malkovich”
Real questions don’t do well under the spotlight; they wilt and are never clear. Sudden and enigmatic, they only offer a glimpse, making us stop and think, “Wait. What was that?”
5. Being There (1979, Hal Ashby) Chance watches cartoons in a limousine.
4. The Thin Red Line (1998, Terrence Malick): American soldiers walk by a local in Guadalcanal.
3. Punch Drunk Love (2002, Paul Thomas Anderson): A car crashes in an empty street.
2. The Graduate (1967, Mike Nichols): True love is realized…and then what?
1. Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972, Werner Herzog): In the end, only monkeys are left for the revolution.
Who is with me?
Sick Reality
I recently made a brief comment on youtube regarding Gravity: Music works well. Film doesn’t. 
I received this reply:
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What kind of sick reality are you living in??
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I returned to the youtube site to find an official youtube message regarding my post: This comment has received too many negative votes.
I was curious about what is “too many” and why there are so many. I don’t mind being on the other side of the fence and fielding differences of opinions; however I do struggle with this weird electronic world where so many ill-thought words are spat.
Leaving Las Vegas
I’ll tell you what everyone is like. Ever think about torture? Ever think about what that is? People torturing others, I mean, people actually willing to literally torture another person, strap someone down and torture, tear off their fucking fingernails, put wire through their flesh, burn their fucking eyes out, what the fuck else? These people will watch, just watch, another person freak out and scream. And for what? Because they fucking can. Because they can get away with it. That’s who we are. That’s what this is about. We’re fucked. We’re so completely and entirely fucked. (from my bad side)
Job Opportunity?
An internet job site recently sent me the following posting:
Good news! The Career Center has found 1 new job that meets your job alert criteria:.Custodian, Full-time Evening (Atherton CA)
Custodian in “Election”
Neither do I have experience as a custodian nor do I live anywhere near Atherton, California which, at 2,933 miles, would be 4-day commute.
Matthew Broderick in “Election”
Maybe the job market is tougher than I thought.
Gravity: All Style
There are moments in Gravity that are worth something – although I’m not sure if it’s worth the $100 million budget nor the $18 ticket. 
The visuals are impressive, like the camerawork and music; however the narrative is superficial at best, offering only caricatures and predictable cliffhangers, as it jumps from one space station to another, with a cloud of space debris always in close pursuit. 
It’s a shame, with all that money, time and ingenuity, that such little effort was invested into fleshing out the details of why we are supposed to care.
Breaking M*A*S*H*
I lost interest in Breaking Bad almost immediately – the second episode focused gruesomely on how to dissolve a body – and so missed the finale which, as one friend told me, was “completely awesome”.
Today’s Breaking Bad cult reminds me of the M*A*S*H* hype in 1983. 
My film class that night – unwisely scheduled opposite the series-ending finale – was reduced from 400 to 50 students, who watched Veritigo instead. 
This is not to say that I’m above it all. I did witness the finale of the first Survivor series and have seen The Bachelor’s After the Final Rose more than once. 
Although, as the drama tends towards tedium, I do tend to watch these on DVR.
Oh Joy! Rapture! Wizard of Oz in 3D
The Wizard of Oz is not so much a spectacle as it is a wonder. 
It is the details of the enterprise – recently re-released in 3D – the dialogue and characters as much as the make-up and set design. 
When Dorothy plummets with her house into Oz, after the whirling symphonic chaos of the twister, the sequence ends in dead silence broken by Dorothy blurting, “Oh!”
These small and wonderful things punctuate the film. A lonely peacock wanders around the Tinman’s house. The Cowardly Lion sings of genuflecting chipmunks. A flying monkey’s face is immersed in poisonous smoke. And Toto, energetically wagging his tail, is in almost every shot, following the troupe on their quest.
Toto watching over all
Yes, the songs and dance numbers are something to behold, but in the end, it’s really all in the fluffy green gloves.
Oz Guard’s Fluffy Green Gloves