V FOR VENDETTA is a big exciting futuristic comic book movie, produced and written by the Wachowskis, starring Hugo Weaving and Natalie Portman, playing in Imax in some towns, but not here. It's a movie nerds are pretty excited for, but the talk is less about is he wearing the right cape, are his powers depicted in exactly the way I personally imagined them, etc., and more about the politics. Because although it features a guy in a cape and mask who fights bad guys in dark alleys, the story is more of a 1984 type deal than a spiderman. Apparently the comic strip book was written in England in the 1980s in response to the Margaret Thatcher administration.
I saw a review in Entertainment Weekly that talked about references to Bush and Bill O'Reilly and Abu Ghraib and what not, but I figure this is more like STAR WARS prequels: it's about all the assholes throughout history, and the leaders we have now just so happen to be members. It's like I always say, if your government is strikingly similar to the dystopian sci-fi stories of the past then you got a problem there, in my opinion.
Hugo Weaving is the main character V, a revolutionary in a Guy Fawkes mask who spins knives around and is waging a bombing campaign against the totalitarian british government. He goes on TV and announces that he'll be blowing up the Parliament in one year and if you agree with him that the government is a bunch of assholes, you should be there to show your support.
Natalie Portman plays Evey, an assistant at a TV station who V rescues from rapist government agents when she's out after curfew. This puts her in league with "the terrorist" as far as the government's concerned, so she ends up forced to hang out with him and hear his side of things.
All the reviews seem to call V a terrorist, but I think this is a mixup like when everybody decided the gay shepherds in BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN were gay cowboys. V is not a terrorist, he is a very ambitious vandal. Yes, he wants to blow up the Parliament building, but since he gives a full year's advanced warning I'm pretty sure there isn't gonna be anybody inside. I mean maybe some dumbass lost track of the date and went into the office late, but I'd like to think a co-worker would've reminded him.
If V was a terrorist, by definition he would be blowing up the building to scare people into doing what he wants. But it's actually the other way around, he is destroying a symbol in order to inspire hope in the people, and since he explains that on TV in advance I'm pretty sure everybody gets it.
That is not to say that he's a completely clean individual, because it so happens that he is also on a Vincent Price style revenge murder spree. Throughout the movie we begin to piece together a backstory explaining what happened to V to inspire his whole revolutionary deal, and he murders a series of people involved in his past. He also does some cold blooded shit to Evey that you might not be able to forgive him for. In the original story maybe this left you feeling ambiguous about him but here, aided by the magic of badass fight scenes and dramatic musical scores, you go away feeling like he's a great martyr. The end of the movie, where the people stand up to the Man, is very moving. It gave me chills just like it did the first time I saw it in that Eminem video.
V is a pretty cool character because 1. he hates the Man and 2. he wears an unmoving mask for the entire movie. You don't see that too often. Even Michael Meyers has taken his mask off a couple times. This guy, you don't know for sure if he's only doing it when Evey's over, but as far as we see he wears the mask 24 hours a day. There's even a scene where he's cooking breakfast wearing the mask. Of course, you do recognize that deep voice as Hugo Weaving, so you maybe picture an agent from the matrix, or an elf, or an australian drag queen, or a dog from BABE under there. So it's not a complete mystery. But Hugo does a real good job, it's hard to imagine another voice behind the mask being as effective.
I got one criticism for this character though, the same problem I have with the Crow. This guy goes around beating up fascists, and he keeps quoting Shakespeare and shit at them. I'm sorry V, you may know alot about Shakespeare, but the average person you're beating up probaly does not. You're just talking gibberish as far as they and, possibly, I, am concerned. A knife fight is not an appropriate venue for literary discussion. Save it for the coffee shop, smartypants.
V has a cool bachelor pad he calls The Shadow Gallery, where he keeps movie posters and famous paintings he stole from government censors. It reminded me of that movie EQUILIBRIUM and made me think about why this is a better take on the same kind of thing. In EQUILIBRIUM, the government burns works of art because they may cause emotion, and emotion is illegal. As far as I could tell, that doesn't have a parallel to anything going on in the real world, unlike V where the art is banned for being indecent. Also, in EQUILIBRIUM you see them tossing the Mona Lisa on a bonfire without comment. It seemed to me a little phoney that the main character just happens to toss the most famous painting of all time in the flames like it ain't no thang. In V you got some pretty famous paintings, but not THE number one most famous painting of all time. So that went down easier.
EQUILIBRIUM is all about the government supressing emotions, which doesn't remind me of real world problems. But V has all kinds of shit that reminds me of what's going on in the world now. There's wiretapping and surveillance, wars and terrorism used to rally the people around their leaders, fake news used to spin things the way the government wants you to see them or to scare people into compliance, references to people being locked up without access to lawyers, waterboarded and convicted by tribunals, even feds putting black hoods over people's heads. In one scene government trucks drive around picking up conversations with microphones and use computer scanners to scan for content, using them like public opinion polls. Which made me think oh shit, they'll probaly start doing that.
There's even a bit about the government going after gay people. I know prejudice against gays has been covered in movies before, but in a big studio comic book movie? It felt a little subversive. You know, in 1989 DO THE RIGHT THING was incredibly controversial just for having a Malcolm X quote written next to an Dr. King one at the end. Now it's 17 years later, they can do end credits with Malcolm X samples playing over dance music. The times they are a changing, I guess.
Warning: there is dancing in this movie. Whenever people talk about the Matrix sequels, they start ranting about what they call "the rave scene," where the humans decide that since they may be about to die fighting for humanity against an army of machines, they might as well spend their last night doing human things like dancing, sweating and fucking. To me it's a nice touch but to literally every person I've ever talked to about the Matrix, it is the worst thing that ever happend to America including when Greedo touched Hans Solo's balls under the table or whatever the deal was. Anyway, this movie also has a last dance before the revolution. I don't think the wachowskis put it in as a deliberate "fuck you," but I hope they did.
The guy I mentioned before in Entertainment Weekly says it's naive to think this movie is subversive, because it's released by a corporation. And it's true that these corporations make money selling a rebel image in entertainment (he mentions Rage Against the Machine as an example). But I think he's sort of wrong still and the reason, my friends, like many things, can be found in THE MATRIX. In that movie, the system (or the machine that we're raging against) is the vast complex of robots who suck energy from our body heat and keep us sedated thinking we're living in the false world of the matrix. (Spoiler.) Morpheus and friends know the deal, but they don't fight back by running up to robot city and swinging sticks at them, because that ain't gonna work. No, what they do instead is go inside the matrix and fight the system from the inside. They find more people for their movement including MVP Neo. The matrix is too big to be able to destroy, instead they have to go inside the matrix and find loopholes that they can take advantage of. Even in part 3 when the war ends they aren't able to destroy the matrix, they just do some damage to it and make a pact to coexist peacefully with it, so people and programs who want to stay in the matrix can.
Maybe in the '60s we had a counterculture but that was a long time ago. Now the culture is so god damn big that a couple neos and some ewoks can't exactly counter it. Yeah we can use the internet and whatever other independent distribution channels we have, and we can do great things. But you know, I got a web sight I can write whatever I want on, but I don't feel like I'm on equal footing with a corporation that owns tv channels, radio stations, satellite radio, magazines, newspapers, theater chains, concert venues, billboards, etc. So maybe it's not the only way but you can't dismiss the people who go inside the matrix and take advantage of their increased kung fu abilities. I bet FAHRENHEIT 9-11 and V FOR VENDETTA change more minds than Robert Greenwald's movies, and not just because they're better movies. It's also because you gotta reach out to people inside the matrix and not just the older couples at your weekly anti-imperialist potluck.
But all that's kind of beside the point anyway because V FOR VENDETTA is more of a movie than it is a political essay, so it better fuckin work as a movie if anybody's gonna give a shit what it's saying. I didn't think it worked from beginning to end - it got a little clunky as the backstory flashbacks got more complicated, and actually I'm not sure I completely understood what exactly happened with this virus and a concentration camp and the rise of the corrupt government. It's more about that than it is about action, but they do give you one big slow motion battle at the end for those who demand something matrixy.
Maybe the deck is a little loaded though. Not that it's unfair to the assholes of history, but it does make revolution seem easy after you've decided you want it. We don't ever see the people who believe the news, the people who like the government. If everybody hated the government then this sort of thing would be alot easier to do. But in real life, there's a good portion of people who could be skinned by George Bush and thrown in a vat of lemon juice and they'd crawl out and ask to have their picture taken with him. That's the problem. Maybe a better example: there were alot of people sad that Milosevic died.
Overall I think the movie works, though. It asks you whether you're more loyal to your government or to liberty, and whether you're willing to risk standing up for it. And it also has this sort of phantom of the opera fucked up romance tragedy going on that I think is interesting. And it all builds to an inevitable but satisfying climax that'll probaly either warm your heart or depress you because you can't picture it really happening.
Anyway if you're like me and you like entertaining genre movies that you can read a leftist subtext into, this movie's for you. And they never had THEY LIVE in Imax, so be thankful for this one.
VAN DAMME, THE FILMS OF JEAN CLAUDE
I have seen a lot of talk about
Jean Claud Van Damme on this news group so what i did was I decided to go
out and rent some of his movies over at a "Blockbuster video" that they have
here. i made a night out of it actually and so here's what i think about this
much discussed karate man.
First of all, body. Small but not that bad. The way he does the splits and
everything kind of makes him look like a fairy but I bet he could kick a guy
pretty hard. I'm still skeptical how long he would last inside but he's not
as weak as some of the pretty boys i've seen in movies. Put it this way I
was surprised.
Secondly the movies though. These were actually some pretty
decent flicks and which at times take a few tips from one of my favorites,
Die hard. Die hard is a movie where Bruce willis (moonlighting
and a lot of movies that are out now) is in a building to kill a group of
terrorists. Bruce is on his own and, importantly, has bare feet. However he
is able to take on all of them by himself. I believe this has been a great
inspiration to a lot of inmates and to hollywood as well judging from Van
damme's films. The true influence of Die hard will probably be studied in
a few years by academics as far as I'm concerned.
Surprisingly bruce is pretty tough in the movie. i've seen much badder but
i wouldn't neccessarily try to bend this guy over. He's originally from comedy
which is part of why it goes over so well as a character, there are jokes
all the time where he insults the guys he's killing. I think Van damme is
also funny although please don't get offended but i think sometimes it's not
on purpose! Though i've had a lot of hand to hand in real life obviously so
i may be pickier than the average movie watcher.
The first movie: Sudden Death
This is basically what i like to call "die hard in a hockey arena" although
Van damme adds a lot of twist like there is a lot more kicking and it's during
a hockey game instead of business meetings.
Second movie: No retreat no surrender
Van damme chose to take a supporting role in this one, as the villain. Not
a bad move in my opinion. Van damme plays Ivan the russian, a very tough customer
actually, at least that is how he is portrayed. He is not like most of the
russian guys i have dealt with (many of whom were pushovers) although i believe
he may be based on the film Rocky 4 starring Sylvester Stallone. That one was
actually pretty fucking good in my opinion although Stallone is kind of a
baby for the most part in my opinion. Rocky practices with logs in the snow
while the russian has all the high tech computers that they can afford, which
i think is a classic tale of a little elbow grease over technology. I REALLY
hated that fucking russian guy in the movie, which I think is a point of good
film making. Back you know where we had what is called a shank, made out of
a piece of a bed frame or some other type of metal you can find, sometimes
some plastic or wood or duct tape for the handle. You can sharpen it on the
walls or the ground when the screws aren't around. Pretty easy to put together
actually. There are different kinds but it is a makeshift knife. Sometimes
silverware also can be used as a weapon. Anyway I'd really like to slit that
russian fag's throat! I know it's fiction but seriously that guy was an asshole.
The main hero in this one is a white kid (can't remember the name) from Seattle
(my own stomping grounds) who takes on the russian. In order to do this he
has to contact the ghost of Bruce Lee to learn better karate from him. A lot
of people do not know that Bruce Lee is buried in Seattle as well as Jimmy
Hendrix. The kid is kind of a pretty boy to be honest but he does have the
ghost karate, which in my opinion karate SOMETIMES can work in a fight. Not
to get too much into that topic, though! I have talked to lots of orientals
who disagrree which is fine, if everyone had the same opinion it would be
a boring world wouldn't it?
I wonder if anyone remembers Karate Kid.
This is what no retreat reminds me of. However having bruce lee ghost instead
of the old guy washing the car is a good touch.
There are other characters such as a fat kid (lots of funny shit about eating
stuff) and a black kid. The black kid does a lot of the rap dancing that was
popular back then and combines it with karate which is a good humorous/comic
effect.
Third movie (final movie): Double Team
In this movie van damme is back in the starring role again although he shares
the second half of the movie with a weird black guy with green hair. The black
guy is actually pretty good as a character, I believe he is a basketball player
as well as an arms dealer.
The real revelation in this one is the bad guy, Mickey Rourke, who fights
van damme when there is a tiger and land mines. Not pretty! It has to do with
kidnapping a baby of van damme's as well as to escape from an island called
the colony.
Of the three i would have to go with Double team is the best. There is a lot
of stuff about technology and monks (for a spiritual side) who take part in
the action as well as Van damme getting his god damned priorities straight
and protecting his family. Good stuff as far as I'm concerned but I am kind
of the old fashioned values generation.
thanks
--vern
Whoah there john, hold on JUST a
second pal. I HOPE you didn't just say that Van damme movies are bad. if so
i would like to see a little more evidence.
i don't want to repeat myself but like I said, Van damme would be able to
last inside longer than the other guys on the list. at least schwarzenegger,
not sure who Seagal is.
if you are referring to the fruity ass shots then PLEASE get with the 90s
as far as I'm concerned.
If your going to make such an outragous claim your going to have to back it
up in DETAIL.
I still stand by Van damme especially as far as double team. I am not a big
fan of karate but Van damme is one of the better karates. (and yes, i know
he's not oriental.)
--vern
Hey don't assume to much you might miss out. I know of what I speak, seriously
- because i thought van damme would be a pussy. I have seen some boxes where
he has long hair all curled and everything. Also the way he's always showing
off his legs and his ass. the guy might as well be wearing pantyhose is what
i originally figured. but no, the truth is he's not half bad, actually pretty
good. although i believe the black guy in double team WAS wearing pantyhose
in one scene
Point is you REALLY should watch the movie. Trust me it is word of mouth that
makes the buzz on a lot of these pictures now a days.
thanks bud
--vern
VANILLA SKY
Vanilla Sky is an american remake of OPEN YOUR EYES, the second picture by the young spanish gentleman Alejandro Amenabar, who also did THESIS and THE OTHERS. After the movie I was saying to a gal that the ending was kinda different on the original, and the guy next to me was saying the same thing to his friend. Except he was just getting out of OCEAN'S 11.
Everything is fucking remakes now, huh? The above took place in Seattle, Washington, where as we speak the Dreamworks company is hard at work on an unneccesary remake of (the) RING. History has not been kind to american remakes of foreign pictures. Even when you get the same guy to remake it - like with THE VANISHING or NIGHTWATCH - the movie will piss everybody off and the director will be forgotten forever.
Well I didn't like VANILLA SKY as much as OPEN YOUR EYES (which, by the way, I didn't like as much as THESIS) but it is surprisingly good for an americanization of a spanish picture. The director is Cameron Crowe, who always does the pictures about what music people listen to when they're falling in love. It shows improvement in the filmatism in my opinion. It is a very good use of sound and music, and cinematographing. There are some subtle touches here and there and more emotion in the character that Cameron Diaz plays, the woman Tom Cruise casually dates who goes nuts on him and tries to kill him. In OPEN YOUR EYES she was more of a nut, here she makes a pretty good point about even if you make it clear you're not serious about this woman, when you fuck her you gotta realize it means something to her. Come on, don't be an asshole Tom Cruise.
In some ways this is an unusual character for Tom Cruise to play. Mainly because he wears a halloween mask. But I guess he did that in EYES WIDE SHUT too so, maybe that's his new thing. But in other ways it's the same old shit from him. He plays a rich prick who drives a ferrari and owns Maxim magazine. This guy is such a rich prick that he has a hologram of John Coltrane to entertain at his parties. I mean jesus tom, how can you do this to John Coltrane? At least do it to Louis Armstrong or somebody. I don't know what's worse, that he's a minstrel for Tom Cruise, or that he's a space age minstrel for Tom Cruise. I didn't love supreme that. But anyway.
So of course he runs into some difficulties. He gets his face completely mauled in a car accident, and then it's a trippy psychological thriller and what not (like OPEN YOUR EYES) with some LOST HIGHWAY type identity confusion (like OPEN YOUR EYES). And the point is, can this rich piece of shit redeem himself?
(Why are movies so interested in saving the souls of rich guys anyway? From Citizen Kane to Ebenezer Scrooge to Nic Cage in the fucking Family Man. Everybody wants to save the soul of a rich guy. Is it because we wish we were the rich guy, and don't want to see ourselves in movies? Or is it because we think real rich guys don't have souls, and we fantasize about changing that? I really don't know.)
Penelope Cruz reprises her role as the love interest, but here they cutified her. She wears funny clothes and says wacky, unexpected things and she puts her hand in the virtual John Coltrane and giggles. But most of all she says little wise things out of the blue so that Tom Cruise can repeat them at the end when he realizes how truly wise and significant they are. Camerone Crowe must have real different taste in gals than I do, because the women he paints as godesses are always kinda annoying to me. I realize that the relationship with Cameron Diaz almost ended in a murder-suicide, but I liked her kinda spunk better than Penelope's. I woulda stuck that one out, gave it a second chance.
Jason Lee is pretty good. FINALLY, a chance to really stretch out, in a breakthrough role as the funny best friend.
The story twists and turns and ends up pretty much the same place OPEN YOUR EYES did, but with about ten minutes of classic american style explaining. Don't worry, we won't let you go home not sure what happened.
But what makes it all interesting to me is that as the movie starts to explain itself, it starts unraveling this theme of pop icons infusing themselves into reality. Images from movies and album covers recreating themselves in your life and your dreams. Your dreams basing themselves on pop art based on the dreams of the people who made them. This is an appropriate theme for an uneccessary remake.
Overall
not bad. Definitely see OPEN YOUR EYES, then maybe see VANILLA SKY if you're
still interested. Unless you're just doing it to find out what the title means.
It doesn't mean shit. sorry.
VANISHING POINT
Under the opening credits you got these beautiful shots of small town life. Some tractors moving around. Some people working. Interesting looking old dudes watching suspiciously out screen doors.
I figured it was just a regular day in farm country until the end of the sequence when the two huge bulldozers lowered their shovels right next to each other, making a giant, shallow v-shape right in the middle of the highway. A roadblock.
I guess that explains all these media people and cops showing up right in the middle of nowhere. The natives stand around and watch. This might be the end of a long journey, at the beginning of the movie.
Suddenly Barry Newman comes down the road, hauling ass in a badass white Dodge Charger. And there's a shitload of cop cars not too far behind him. He skids out in time to avoid the road block and takes off through a field. The cops follow, and he leads them through an offroad obstacle course.
This is a classic opening to a movie. Here is this guy in a car, getting chased by cops. We don't know who this guy is. We don't know what his name is or what he's about. It could be anything. Maybe he's a cool guy, maybe he's got a trunk full of dead kids. We don't know. All we know is, he's at the end of the line and he's still making a run for it. And we're rooting for him. You wouldn't think it would work, you wouldn't think we'd give a shit about some guy we know nothing about in a situation we don't know the context of. But the simplicity and the mystery of it pulls you in. It's perfect.
Of course, soon we flash back to the beginning of this whole mess. And the pieces slowly go together. In a nutshell, this guy's name is Kowalski, and his job is delivering cars. He made his boss a bet that he could get this car from Colorado to San Francisco in 15 hours. So when motorcycle cops try to pull him over for speeding, he decides he'd rather not bother. This sort of starts things off on a bad foot between Kowalski and the policing community. And although he really hasn't done anything, the tension escalates across hours and state lines. And you slowly start to find out about other things in his life that may be contributing to his decision to say "fuck all y'all" through the medium of speeding.
Along the way he becomes a folk hero, and a blind DJ with a police scanner (Cleavon Little as Super Soul) gives him thinly veiled tips over the airwaves. It's not a continuous drive - he stops for various encounters with friends and enemies, old and new (including a crazy old hermit who catches snakes in the desert) - but it's still got five times your recommended daily allowance of awesome car chase.
In the movie THE WOMAN CHASER (and maybe in the Charles Willeford book it's based on, but I'm not sure because I haven't read it yet) the anti-hero is trying to make a low budget movie about a trucker who runs over a little girl and then gets chased, and refuses to stop until the citizens of America build a huge road block out of junk, and he crashes through, burns up and then gets beat down afterwards. This is like the non-evil version of that movie, where the driver actually didn't do anything and the people are all behind him. Only the man is against him. But it does end up with a finish that could be interpreted to be real existential or mystical or something that ends with an al.
This one was before TWO LANE BLACKTOP and some other car driving movies like that. It definitely seems to have influenced the tone of those movies. And it's still the best of this type of picture.
One thing though, I'd be pretty bummed if I was the guy waiting for the car to be delivered.
VIDOCQ
[Originally Written for The Ain't It Cool News - received no response]
HARRY -- A while back you were real excited about a french picture called VIDOCQ. It's directed by the fellow Pitof, who did special effects type work for CITY OF THE LOST CHILDREN and ALIENS RESURRECTED and the joan of arc picture with Milla Jovovich. Also Marc Caro - the only man in the world who can say he directed DELICATESSEN but has never done a romantic comedy - designed the look of the characters. It's based on some old detective character called Vidocq, who I guess must be the french Sherlock Holmes although americans have never heard of him on account of his name is spelled weird.
Well I am only a simple american but I have seen VIDOCQ now so I have a few words on the subject. I sort of agree with the frenchmen who reviewed it on your sight because this is not gonna be anybody's favorite movie of the year. No pants will be wet. The characters and story are not dead on perfect like AMELIE and there is no hardcore pornography in there like other french films that have made it to US art house type theaters lately. But that does not mean it's a bad film. In fact it is a pretty fuckin good one and most people who see it will be glad they did. It is clever and the connection to THE LOST CHILDREN is pretty obvious not only in the visuals but in some elements of the story.
You see this is a movie that combines france of the 1830s with fantastical type elements. The story begins with a thrilling battle between Vidocq (Gerard Depardieu, who americans first fell in love with in 102 DALMATIONS) and The Alchemist (some dude in a mask). The whole time they are dancing around a big pit spewing phoney looking digital flames, so you know one of them is going down.
Well, contrary to what you may have read [VERN NOTE: you may have read it in a supposed review on Ain't It Cool News], Vidocq is NOT the main character. Instead it is a young individual who comes to Vidocq's partner and claims to be the late detective's official biographer. His book is almost completed but what better way to honor its subject than to reveal the identity of the killer in the last chapter? So the biographer tries to retrace Vidocq's steps on his last case, to solve the mystery. As he uncovers clues there are many clever transitions into flashbacks of Vidocq working the case. (So don't worry Dalmation fans, Depardieu shows up many times.) And then the Alchemist seems to be following him, killing everybody he interviews. There is blood, etc.
Your previous reviewers didn't seem to like the fantastical elements mixed into the historical setting. I'm not sure what they expected. I mean the villain is named The Alchemist, not The Pharmacist or The Practicioner of Accepted Modern Scientific Principles. He's not even The Herbalist. In my opinion this is what keeps the story interesting. If we wanted fucking Poirot we'd watch PBS. Instead we get The Case of the Lightning Conspiracy, which involves two people being struck by lightning, a circle of rich perverts, somebody killing virgins, and the alchemist wearing a mirror mask so that his victims see themselves in the face of their killer. Just the kind of shit you'd expect from a guy named Pitof.
A WORD ABOUT SPECIAL EFFECTS DUDES DIRECTING MOVIES. In general this is something that should be avoided. I don't want to prejudge a motherfucker but I think we have enough evidence that we, as a society and culture, can stand up against it as an abomination against Cinema. Some pictures that come to mind: SPAWN, A GNOME NAMED GNORM, HELLRAISER: BLOODLINE, THE FLY II, THE PAGEMASTER, JUMANJI, JURASSIC PARK III, THE DEMOLITIONIST, WISHMASTER, VIRUS, and of course SPAWN should be mentioned again for emphasis. I mean, jesus. SPAWN! But to be fair, there are instances where we must be thankful that this societal rule was ignored. David Fincher for example started out doing effects for George Lucas and went on to direct 1999 Outlaw Award Winner for Best Fuckin Picture FIGHT CLUB. He is one of the best modern directors and there he was, way back when, playing with little toy spaceships in a glorified garage somewheres, for money.
Another notable exception is Stephen Norrington, who defied all laws of science and art by 1. being an effects guy turned director 2. doing a Marvel Comics movie 3. having it be about vampires and 4. starring Wesley Snipes with 5. martial arts set to 6. techno music with 7. "MTV style" editing and somehow made it A GREAT FUCKING PICTURE. We are still waiting to see if he can create a worthy followup but we should at least give him a tiny bit of credit-by-association for this year's best picture so far, BLADE II, since he set the tone and established the world and characters.
And with those two in mind, let me also note that they started their directing careers with a whimper. Fincher's first one was the third Alien movie, the one everyone hated until Fincher became popular, where the tone and atmosphere are nice but all the characters are bald and you can't tell them apart and they just run around in hallways and never seem to be in real danger even though some janitor character we knew nothing about got eaten. Norrington's first was a mildly competent killer robot movie called DEATH MACHINE - nothing to Write mom about. Pitof is off to a more impressive start.
The look of the movie is completely artificial. He always puts the best dark clouds in the sky and the right gloomy buildings in the background. But it's nice that just because he's an effects dude he didn't base his movie around some gnome or pumpkinhead or alien or death machine. The biggest effect is the mirror mask that the Alchemist wears, and sometimes birds fly out of his cloak. But he is mainly in a couple of big showoff sequences. Most of the movie is about trying to track him down.
The biggest issue this picture brings up is the use of HIGH DEFINITION DIGITAL VIDEO. So let's end this with a discussion of this dangerous technology.
MY STANCE ON DV: Don't ever use it if you don't have to. You NRA nuts know what I'm talkin about. It is okay to collect digital video cameras or use it for home made pornography. But if you can afford real film and cameras it is ALWAYS the best choice. I have seen some decent movies shot on video (DANCER IN THE DARK, BAISE MOI, CHUCK AND BUCK, TAPE) but most of them woulda looked better on film. DV made BAMBOOZLED and ORIGINAL KINGS OF COMEDY unbearably ugly. And it's gonna be a long fuckin time before you can see something on video and not feel like you're watching tv or somebody's birthday party home video.
The ONLY top notch use of DV I've seen is JULIEN DONKEY BOY by some lady named Harmony Korine. She transferred the video to film and then back again or some fancypants shit like that and she degraded the image enough that it is interesting to look at, whatever it is. Like a less extreme version of what the fellow did in BEGOTTEN. But most people are just imitating the look of film, and that includes Pitof.
Pitof's use of DV on VIDOCQ is a tough one. On one hand, it does look more like film than any DV I've seen before. Most of the movie looks beautiful and cinematic, lots of dark shadows, etc. After the initial "this is some TV show, not a real movie" shock, you mostly forget that you are watching some fuckin video camera. You start to think that you are watching an actual movie. The genuine article. If the technology improves, some day it actually WILL be a real movie. I won't even care. And Pitof supposedly chose the DV because it gave his effects people more freedom to manipulate the images, so there was an actual artistical type reason to use it, they're not just being cheap skates.
On the other hand, it still DOESN'T quite look like a real movie. And this will be more obvious in pictures that aren't deliberately trying to look phoney like VIDOCQ. What happens when we, the Badass Cinema community, finally get another Mariachi picture and it doesn't even look like film? Would Sergio Leone have used digital video if it was invented before he died? Did Kubrick try it out? NO FUCKIN WAY. It is important to hold yourself up to a standard.
This issue also affects Newsies, because the same camera is being used for the upcoming STAR TREK PART 2. And I think it will make Yodaland (or whatever in fuck they call the darth vader universe) look a little less like a real place and a little more like a nintendo game. I know Harry and Morry have already seen it, and I don't remember any complaints about the video. But if they're using the same cameras Pitof used, I'm betting it is distracting at times. I personally thought the ad they showed on Fox TV looked more phoney than the last one, the one with Darth Maul, RETURN OF THE PHANTOM I believe it was called. I think when you've already made, what, 4 or 5 other Star Trek films, and they were all FILMS, it's kind of a punk bitch type maneuver to put out a Star Trek VIDEO all the sudden. At least finish the story before you completely change the look. There are gonna be Newsies CRYING when they see this thing, in my opinion. And not because they are moved by computer Yoda's performance.
But that remains to be seen. I guess there's no harm in all of Hollywood jumping head long into an incomplete technology. It worked for Dr. Frankenstein, didn't it? I don't know, I never finished the book.
Anyway, VIDOCQ's pretty good, though. If they bring it to theaters or DVD here give it a shot.
thanks bud
Vern
http://www.geocities.com/outlawvern