From 2007: Five Movies That Prove MPAA Ratings Are Broken

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In Kirby Dick’s film, “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” Dick examines the MPAA ratings board members and explores the sketchy and seedy underbelly of our country’s ratings system. We learn that ratings, far from being an exact science, often leave people guessing as to what criteria are used when evaluating their films; that MPAA ratings amount to censorship; that raters are probably subject to the whims of studio pressure; and, ultimately, that the ratings board is completely unaccountable for its actions.

More than any year in recent memory, 2007 demonstrated that these assertions are true, through the preposterous ratings that have come out for some of the year’s most popular and/or highest grossing films. And while I will examine some of them during the course of this post, there are several premises that I base my arguments on, which will be important to understand before I get going:

Rating a movie with an R rating limits its reach, its audience, and potentially, its grosses – Since R is the only rating (other than NC-17) that actually prevents someone from being able to get into the theater, directors and studios will often bend over backwards to get the coveted PG-13 for an adult-themed movie. The reasons are obvious: PG-13 ratings open up the huge 12-16-year old market, and allows them to get into the theater unhindered (My local movie theater, for example, actually cards).

Parents trust film ratings as a guide to tell them whether or not they should take their children to see a film – Whether they are right to do so or not, the fact that they do remains a fact of life. And when parents take small children in to see a film that features dozens of maimings, impalings, and brutal murders because it’s only rated PG-13, you know that the system is broken somewhere.

Independent film studios hold less sway over the MPAA than big established studios – Paramount, Universal, and Disney have more money, more power, and more influence.

The MPAA has established itself as the de facto gatekeeper of who gets in and out of films. I don’t necessarily mind this, but if they’re going to do it, all I have to say is: don’t do such a crappy job of it. Without further ado, here are five films from 2007 that prove that the MPAA ratings system is unequivocally broken:

5. Once
What it was rated: R
What it should have been rated: Anything else less severe
Comments: One of the ratings rules that has actually become quite evident is the prohibition against the F-word. “Once,” winner and nominee of many awards (and listed by many critics as one of the best films of the year) is a completely innocuous, innocent, and sweet love story in which two people find a shared affection of music and for each other. But because the F-bomb is dropped a few times, the MPAA decided that it’s too extreme for your kids to watch. Also, in this slot, feel free to put in any other independent film this year (or any other year) that’s been dicked over by the MPAA’s shenanigans. While this example in and of itself is not enough to demonstrate the MPAA’s incompetence, the ones that follow show how ridiculous the “Once” rating decision truly was.

Here's a preview of "Once":

click here for the clip


4. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End
What it was rated: PG-13
What it should have been rated: R
Comments: In an obvious display of Disney’s influence, this brutal film was given a PG-13, undoubtedly a fact that allowed it to rocket to an incredible box office take. The movie opens with the public hanging of a 10-year old boy, and features countless killings and maimings of pirates and soldiers, a couple scenes in which people are brutally burned by cannonball fire, an attempted rape, and in the most disturbing scene of the film, the complete annihilation of a man’s face with a Davy Jones’ tentacles. Not pleasant to watch and not appropriate for kids, despite its Disneyland ride pedigree.

Bonus video: See this spoiler-y video while it's still up and decide for yourself (fast forward to 6 minutes in to see what I think is the most gruesome death in the film):






3. Live Free or Die Hard
What it was rated: PG-13
What it should have been rated: R
Comments: The MPAA’s liberal stance on violence and conservativeness on foul language is fully on display here. It’s okay to show Bruce Willis graphically putting a gun into a wound in his shoulder and pulling the trigger, but having him say “Yipee Kay-yay Motherfucker,” as McClane’s character was meant to do is, of course, unacceptable. The film also featured a woman getting hit by a car, then plunging to a fiery death, dozens of graphic gunshot deaths, and a man getting ground up into a fine hamburger-y pulp. But no F-word and no sex means that kids are allowed to check this one out. Go here for the opposite perspective on this issue.

Bonus Video: Ignore the music and check out this summary of many of the film's killings (spoilers within):

Click here for the clip

2. Beowulf
What it was rated: PG-13
What it should have been rated: R
Comments: Despite being animated, this movie features an Angelina Jolie that’s basically naked, a hideous monster that murders - often brutally - dozens of townspeople (for example, he tore one in two and chewed off another one's head, slowly), several impalings, a graphic dislocation of an arm, a graphic severing of an arm, and lots of gore in the slaying of the monsters featured. One character's family is burned alive, although this is only implied off screen. I went to see it in IMAX 3d (a great experience, by any stretch of the imagination) but was disappointed to find out that several families had brought infants in with them to see the film. As I saw Grendel's horrific visage barrel onto the screen, a prelude to his murderous rampage, I myself was on the edge of my seat and just a little frightened. I can't imagine the mental scars that these kids in the audience would have to bear. Beowulf 3D is what little kids' nightmares are made of.

Bonus Video: Beowulf, rated PG-13, ironically has a red band trailer. Catch a glimpse of the gore here:

Click here for the clip
1. Taxi to the Dark Side
Comments: "Taxi to the Dark Side" is Alex Gibney's yet-to-be-released documentary looking at how our country slowly transformed, post-9/11, into one that tortures civillians and ignores the Geneva conventions. This top example on my list doesn’t concern the film’s rating as much as the MPAA’s preposterous decision to censor its poster, seen above (which, let’s all admit, is not so much inappropriate as it is shocking in its veracity). As Boing Boing put it, “MPAA message? Torture for entertainment is suitable for all ages. Torture examined in a documentary is not.” In a society in which the real-life torture of terrorists suspects is so salient to the American image in the world at large, the MPAA’s hampering of this movie’s messages strikes me as especially despicable.

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Reading over this post again, I sound like a prude, but in fact, I'm not arguing against violence, sex, or language in movies. I am strongly against censorship in any form, whether that comes in the form of an NC-17 rating for movies or an AO rating for videogames. I'm arguing that the MPAA should either 1) Use clear, sensible standards that every movie can abide by, and/or 2) Be publicly accountable with the methodology it currently rates films. Usually the argument about parents taking children in to see adult films is that the parents should know better. But if the MPAA does such a horrendous job of informing them, then I think more of the blame should fall on the organization them than on the parents.

Shame on you, MPAA. Shame on you for censoring great indendent films, while simultaneously bending to the will of studios and using leniency on their ratings. Shame on you for all the kids you've scarred by allowing their uninformed parents to take them into see the atrocities in films like "Beowulf." And shame on you for using politics in a time when America needs more honesty and self-examination about its international activities, more than ever.

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Update 1: Added in the word "sensible" to 2nd to last paragraph

The Objectivist Implications of Ratatouille

In my crapulence, I missed out on Ratatouille in theaters, despite the fact that Brad Bird is one of my favorite directors, and Pixar hasn't made a film I haven't liked yet (with the potential exception of "Cars"). In any case, I basically purchased a blu-ray player just so I could watch the film in high-def the first time. That's how certain I was that I would like it.

The film certainly delivered on all fronts. While some of the messages about dealing with prejudice and, separately, about rising above your humble beginnings were a bit lost in the mix, I was dazzled by the film's amazing animation, great voice acting (esp. by fellow nerd Patton Oswalt), and uplifting ending.

So how does it relate with my last post?

Between "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille," I think Brad Bird has really come full circle. Cracked.com once described "The Incredibles" as an "Ayn Rand bedtime story" and I basically tried to prove as much in my last post. But the message of "Ratatouille" seems drastically different. The film chronicles the activities of Remy, a rat who has a keen sense of smell, a complete understanding of English, and a strong desire for delicious food. The problem is that his rat-like appearance poses problems whenever he tries to get into a kitchen for grub that compares favorably to his normal dumpster-diving fare.


One day while pawing through a kitchen for some foodstuffs, Remy encounters the work of master chef Auguste Gusteau, whose cooking skills and populist message ("Anyone Can Cook") resonate deeply with Remy.

Shortly afterwards, through a series of comedic and outlandish circumstances, Remy is marooned in Paris and figures out a mutually beneficial arrangement with a young boy named Alfred Linguini. They work out a system in which Remy pulls on his hair to control his hand movements, using him as a vessel to make divine culinary creations.

There's the standard bad guy and the obligatory love interest, but the heart of the story is Remy's break from his rat family and how he grapples with his role in the world. Does the world have a place for a chef from such humble beginnings? The end of the movie seems to offer an unequivocal and hopeful answer: Yes.

The thematic differences between "The Incredibles" and "Ratatouille" are quite stark. Whereas one argues that there are those among us who are inherently superior (and that's a good thing), the other argues that even the lowest of the low can achieve greatness. Whereas one argues that "special-ness" is something that is granted or inherited, the other shows that it must be worked at, in the midst of obstacles that risk even life and limb. Whereas one is a celebration of the superiority of others, the other is a celebration of egalitarianism, and the triumph of an indomitable will.

"Ratatouille" repudiates the message of "The Incredibles" and it does so in a way that only a genius like Brad Bird could. It is sweeping in its simple and profound message. It has characters that grow and change throughout the course of the film's running time. And it is deeply moving.

See it!





BONUS VIDEO: For longtime readers, you'll know what this is:

Click here for clip

The Trajan Invasion

MAN, what a long week. I hope everyone out there is getting into the holiday spirit and not working yourselves to death. Cause I am.

Kirby over at Goodiebag.tv has posted up an insightful video about one design element (My DVD cover art post is referenced in his notes). Check it out:


click here for the video


Have a great weekend!

What Does Bioshock Have In Common With The Incredibles?

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[MAJOR SPOILERS for Bioshock and Incredibles to follow]

[This post has been updated to respond to comments left on the blog. Please see update at the bottom.]

On Thanksgiving Day, NBC broadcast the network premiere of "The Incredibles," allowing me to watch the film in HD - a pretty great experience since there's currently no other way to do so. I love the film, but every time I watch it, its overriding themes always bother me. Coincidentally, I also recently played and beat the wonderful "Bioshock," by Irrational Games, which is what led me to write this post.

Intentional or not , both of them derive strong inspirations from Ayn Rand's work. But where "Bioshock" illustrates the downfall of objectivism, "The Incredibles" spends most of its running time advocating it, to an extent that's fairly shocking for a mainstream film. This article will explore the similarities between the two works, but I will spend the bulk of the time interpreting their take on Rand's philosophies.


First, a quick tour of objectivism: Rand's philosophy, made evident in books like The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged essentially boils down to the notion that humans are self-interested and should be allowed to pursue their own happiness. In her own words,

My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute.

Those that are smarter, more talented, or just plain better should be allowed to pursue their own interests without interference from government, religion, or anyone/anything else. The societal consequences of this are, of course, unfettered laissez-faire capitalism. This, coincidentally, is the exact same principle that Andrew Ryan (whose name is a play on Rand's name), one of the main characters from Bioshock, lives by. The following clip from the game should give you a pretty good summary of it, while also demonstrating how awesome the game is:

Click here for the clip

In Bioshock, Ryan perfects the notion of objectivism in his underwater city but when scientists came up with plasmids and the devious Fontaine - more word play on Rand's The Fountainhead - cornered the market on them, things went horribly awry. Although we know that Ryan continued to have faith in free market capitalism ("Just design a better product!"), ultimately human nature took over. The power of plasmids was too hard to resist. And some, like Ryan and Fontaine, just became addicted to power:


click here for the clip

While Bioshock shows us the promise of objectivism, with its beautiful underwater city loaded with brilliant scientists and artists, it also shows us its downfall. What Ken Levine, the game's writer, seems to be saying is that human nature is incompatible with Rand's vision of the heroic person and that objectivism, noble and promising as it may be, is doomed to failure. Ugly, dystopian, freaky, frightening failure.

On the other hand, consider "The Incredibles."

In the opening scene of "The Incredibles," Mr. Incredible saves a suicidal building jumper, who in turns sues the daylights out of him. The "Supers" are then all forced into hiding by the government and the old-school film depicting the incident shows how they have now become everyday people:


Consider this piece of narration from the above section:

The supers will be granted amnesty from responsibility for past actions, in exchange for the promise to never again resume hero work. Where are they now? They are living among us. Average citizens, average heroes. Quietly and anonymously continuing to make the world a better place.

The world in the film is one that clearly glorifies normality and same-ness. And that fact is intended to frustrate the audience, especially given the acrobatics we've just witnessed in the opening scene. We want to see these super heroes doing what they love to do, what they were born to do. And we hate that it's been taken away from them.

Speaking of which, there is a clear delineation between the supers and "normals." The character Incrediboy/Syndrome/Buddy, played deliciously by Jason Lee, is one of the latter, and his affections for hero work are repeatedly rebuffed by Mr. Incredible. In the opening scene, Incredible heartlessly ejects him from his car after Incrediboy tries to tag along:

Mr. Incredible doesn't mind working with cohorts like Frozone and Elastigirl, but Incrediboy seems to be out of the running simply because he wasn't born with superpowers. Forget the fact that he has worked immensely hard and has single-handedly engineered incredible technology; in the opening scene, he is depicted as annoying, foolish, and almost responsible for destroying a train full of innocent bystanders:


The primary problem with Incrediboy is that he's not one of the "chosen" ones, he's not "incredible." And therefore, he shouldn't hinder the efforts of those that are "incredible." Of course, i can't continue without mentioning the (in)famous scene in which Mr. Incredible laments mediocrity:


Bob: It's not a graduation. He's moving from the fourth grade to
the fifth grade. It's psychotic! They keep creating new ways to celebrate
mediocrity but if someone is genuinely exceptional...
Helen: This is not about you, Bob. This is about Dash.
Bob: You want to do something for Dash? Then let him actually
compete. Let him go out for sports!
Helen: You know why we can't do that...
Bob: Because he'd be great!

Mediocrity should not be celebrated, Bob seems to be saying. Greatness should be. And greatness, in the realm of the movie, means having superpowers. Weren't born with them? Too bad, even if you have an intelligence that can only be described as monstrously large (e.g. Syndrome).

By the end of the film, Syndrome has transformed into an evil menace and the Incredibles are cheered for thwarting his plan, and eventually, for killing him. The message of the film seems clear: Those that hinder greatness will be destroyed. In the end, greatness reveals itself and triumphs over mediocrity. Pretty heady stuff, and actually a pretty horrifying message for a children's film.

Except for one last thing.

In the final scene, Dash is seen actually taking up sports, while his family cheers him on from the bleachers. But they don't tell him to use his gifts to their fullest extent. Instead, they scream at him to do just well enough to come in second place:

It's actually a poignant scene and funny scene. But what are we to take from all this? This last scene seems to confuse "the message" of the movie and it's not entirely clear what Brad Bird is trying to communicate here. Perhaps he is saying that everyone can co-exist peacefully, that being "incredible" isn't all that important, and that it's not necessarily exclusive of normality. If this is true, then I think it's a positive message, but certainly a contrast from the 1 hour and 45 minutes that have come before.

Although Bird has often stated that he didn't intend any of the Rand-ian parallels, they are often sometimes embedded even within the visuals of the film, such as during the climax when Mr. Incredible takes a pose that looks a heck of a lot like Atlas Shrugged:


Whether or not they were intentional, the parallels and messages are fairly clear.

My law professor once called "The Incredibles" a "Republican movie." There are those that are incredible, there are those that aren't incredible, and that's just the way life is. You have to just have "it" in you (i.e. in the "Republican" analogy, "it" would be wealth, power, or an overriding desire for those things) and if you don't, you're looked down upon. When I first heard him, I didn't really know what the hell he was talking about. But now, I think I've come to terms with it.

"Bioshock" and "The Incredibles" show two visions of objectivism. "Bioshock" glorifies this vision before burning it to the ground, and quite rapidly at that. "The Incredibles," on the other hand," simply glorifies it. Yet regardless of what these works have to say, they remain some of my favorites of all time, and I hope they will be for you too.

So what do you think?

Next Friday: The Objectivist Implications of Ratatouille

Update (11:00pm, 12/10/07): There's been lots of great discussion going on in the comment section, so I thought I should take some time to respond. I think that responding to Brock's points will help answer some challenges that you guys have posed to my theories.

Brock said:

As others have mentioned, Incrediboy was out of the running because he was a child without the training or skills to survive Hero work. Mr. Incredible said the exact same thing about his own children.

I don't recall when Mr. Incredible said this about his own children, but in any event, Incrediboy was not Bob's child, and therefore, he wouldnt' have felt as protective over him. I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that Incrediboy could have been trained over time, in a Batman-and-Robin situation. Certainly that would have been preferable to rejecting a potential apprentice outright.

Brock said:

In the scene where Incrediboy's help is rejected, he hasn't done any of the times you've mentioned. If you're going to discuss movies, you NEED to keep your timelines straight.

Sorry, Brock. YOU need to get your timelines straight. In the opening scene, Incrediboy has already developed rocket shoes that allow him to fly...technology that we don't yet have today (in the real world). He definitely showed promise and when he shows up years later with zero-point energy, it's not a complete surprise because we've already seen his brilliance demonstrated at such a young age.

Brock said (I'm cutting and pasting his responses into one whole one):

I would have thought that 'the problem' with Incrediboy/Syndrome was that he was a psychotic murder. The message I got was: "Those who build giant killer-robots, murder people, and try to destroy whole cities, will be opposed by good people who have the power to do so." The other lesson I got was: "Just because someone was mean to you as a kid is no excuse for building giant killer-robots, murdering people, or trying to destroy whole cities."

What you don't fully take into account here is that the REASON Syndrome became a psychotic murderer was partially a result of his rejection by Mr. Incredible at the beginning. I don't disagree with you that he was a psychotic murderer (and should have been held to account for his actions) but if Incredible had said "Hey kid, you clearly are brilliant and have a lot of potential, despite your lack of super powers. I would like to train you as my successor," we can imagine the movie having a much different ending. It also would have been a much less exciting movie.

My problem is with Mr. Incredible's reason for not accepting Incrediboy, and I think it was primarily a result of his not having superpowers (and secondarily as a result of other reasons, e.g. he was annoying, he was young, he was inexperienced, etc.)

One last thing to consider before moving on from Syndrome. Consider this passage of dialogue from the film:

Oh, I'm real. Real enough to defeat you! And I did it
without your precious gifts, your oh-so-special powers. I'll give them heroics.
I'll give them the most spectacular heroics anyone's ever seen! And when I'm old and I've had my fun, I'll sell my inventions so that everyone can be superheroes. Everyone can be super. And when everyone's super...no one will be.

This last line is delivered ominously, and with scary music in the background to boot. The director is indicating to the audience that they should fear Syndrome's vision of the future, a future in which there is nothing remarkable about anyone, a future in which everyone can be super. And ultimately, for a children's movie, I think that's a shame. Despite his hyper-intelligence, at this point in the film Syndrome still represents mediocrity, sameness, and the status quo, which (as I've tried to point out) is what the film rails against.

Shifting gears to Bioshock: As for the notion that Andrew Ryan didn't truly exemplify Rand-ian ideals, I think user Edgeman says it best, when he's quoting user Brackhar:

"There's a large hole in your analysis regarding Bioshock though. In the end Rapture didn't collapse under the weight of its Randian ideals, but instead because Andrew Ryan betrayed those principles."

I was thinking, isn't this EXACTLY why Randian ideals always fail, and wasn't this the point the writer made about it. In my personal opinion, if you really think it through, pretty much ANY form of government would work perfectly fine if human beings weren't so...human. Randian philosophy fails exactly for this reason. It fails to see reality beyond the naive ideals, and fails to see that human beings are greedy and selfish.

For those that have read and taken my thoughts seriously, thank you. I have tried to do the same for yours. Even if you didn't agree, I hope you at least found the post thought-provoking. If more comments come in, I'll do another update (or if you feel your comment didn't get a fair shake, feel free to e-mail me and I'll try to write up a response).

Thanks for reading!

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Shooter Is Sniper Porn

There are films that seem like they give you a glimpse into another world, films like "Babel," "Dark Days," "Amores Perros." Ostensibly, these films offer an unadulterated examination of the lives of people who you would never normally interact with. They are, in many ways, fascinating yet also to some degree pornographic. They rely heavily on the fact that they're showing you something new, something fresh, something unknown, in order to hold your attention. And while comparing "Babel" to a film like "Shooter" is a really bizarre thing to do in any circumstance, that's loosely what i'm doing today.

I saw shooter on DVD the other day and found it to be offensive, pointless, disgusting...yet somehow awesome. But the most fascinating part of the film is that it wants you to think it knows a lot about sniping. Take this bit of dialogue:

"Long shots generally go places you wouldn't want to go afterwards to confirm'em. Confirmation does pose a problem. You know what it takes to make a shot a that range? Everything comes into play that far. Humidity, elevation, temperature, wind, spin drift. There's a six to ten second flight time so you have to shoot it where the target's going to be. Even the Coriolis effect, the spin of the Earth comes into play. President will be wearin' body armor, that means a head shot, at over a mile? You believe there is a shooter involved capable of makin' this shot?"

"Yes."

"Then you got a real problem. You got to find the shooter."

A scene like this is really interesting to me. It makes one feel enlightened, yet at the same time probably does nothing to scratch the surface of what's really involved in being a good sniper. While educating, it also perpetuates our ignorance, allowing us to wallow in our minimal knowledge of a subject. And to a significant degree, that's what movies like shooters are all about: Giving you a glimpse into the unknown, but only enough that the unknown is sexy, unreal, and unattainable.

Mostly though, we just watch these movies to watch people killing other people. Expertly. To this extent, Shooter delivers (This is the movie's climax):


Click here for the clip

The Top 10 John Woo Shootouts

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In a week, filmmaker John Woo's first ever videogame, "Stranglehold," will be released...and I couldn't be more excited:



Although the trailer makes the game look schlocky, the game gives everyone an opportunity to do what John Woo fans have always dreamed of: To play the role of hard-Boiled cop, Tequila.

I grew up watching John Woo's films and I'm one of his biggest fans. Sure, he uses the same old tricks over and over and over and over again (Doves, guns pointing across from each other, jumping/flipping while shooting guns with both hands, excessive slow motion). But I can still eat up a good John Woo film like it's nobody's business. Almost every one of them is a well-choreographed ballet of violence, a visual representation of the intense and eternal struggle between good and evil.

In celebration of the game's release, here are the John Woo's Top 10 most intense shootouts, in no particular order:


The Killer - Opening shootout - Let's start with something light; the opening scene for "The Killer." It's just a plain ol' execution of a target (plus all the guys in the room). Still, it's done with amazing style. Observe:



Hard Boiled - Teahouse shootout - A perfect opening for Woo's action extravaganza, this scene has a lot of memorable moments (the part when Tequila smashes open the birdcage is unforgettable). Coupled with the messy editing and the final, cold-hearted murder, this scene deftly paints a picture of Tequila as an uncontrollable, unstable cop you don't want to mess with.




The Killer - Apartment shootout - Chow Yun Fat has it tough in this movie. Right when he is starting to come to grips with his friend's betrayal, that's when a cadre of henchmen come in to miss his s**t up. Just remember when you watch Chow whip that gun out of his sleeve: Before "Desperado," there was "The Killer."



The Killer - Church shootout - John Woo's darkest film contains one of the most hyper-stylized action sequences ever shot in a church. This scene is vicious, insanely long, and basically a work of art, an excellent culmination for the brooding film that's just come before it.


(Fast forward past first 2 minutes to get to the action)


A Better Tomorrow 2 - Final Shootout - This film was mostly crap, save for this one scene at the end where Chow Yun Fat and two dudes absolutely mess up the bad guys. My favorite sequence is the mutual gun-slide at the end (which by the way, makes absolutely no sense), a new addition to the Woo canon at this point:






Face/Off- Hangar shootout - Woo's best American film also has many of the elements of his Asian films. Namely, conflict between two charismatic main characters and a hell of a lot of bullets. However, the Hollywood budget lets Woo play with planes and humvees too. For that, we can all be grateful.



Hard Boiled - Warehouse shootout - The violence in Woo's movies is so over-the-top, it borders on comical. This is the warehouse shootout, but it's more appropriately called the warehouse massacre. First all the bad guys come in and massacre the rival gangsters. Then Tequila comes in BY HIMSELF and single-handedly massacres the entire warehouse full of guys. The ending is classic.
Part 1:

(ignore the awful spanish dub)
Part 2:

(ignore the awful spanish dub)

Face/Off - Somewhere Over The Rainbow shootout - Violence in Woo's film never really feels like violence (not like it does in, say, the Bourne films). You really feel as though every single movement, every gunshot, every bullet wound has been planned. No scene captures this feel better than this wonderful pairing of "Somewhere over the rainbow" with some shootout carnage in "Face/Off":



The Killer - House shootout - Chow Yun Fat and his buddy take out fifty guys as they storm the house. There's really nothing else more to say:



Hard Boiled - Hospital shootout - It wasn't enough for John Woo to open the movie with a shootout, then shove in a couple more shootouts in the middle. He had to end "Hard Boiled" with one of the longest, uninterrupted streams of violence ever filmed. The hospital shootout is an absolute classic and cannot be missed by any serious action fan, or certainly, any fan of John Woo. Here are some excerpts:

(ignore the awful English dub)

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DVD Cover Ruination: Zodiac DVD Cover Smothered With Floating Heads

[This post is part of a weekly series. Click here to see the rest of the series. Click here to see my original rant against DVD cover art.]

One of my favorite directors of all time is David Fincher and one of my favorite films of the past year was "Zodiac." Not content with being just an ordinary serial killer thriller, "Zodiac" reached for much higher goals and ended up being a masterpiece about obsession and the need to know. I just wish that David Fincher would make some more movies; though I love each and every one of his films (even "Panic Room" has its pleasures, although I wasn't as much a fan of "Alien 3,") he is not what you would call prolific.

Check out "Zodiac's" great poster art:
It's mysterious - a simple, a foggy shot of the Golden Gate with a delicious punny tagline: "There's more than one way to lose your life to a killer."

Now comes the floating head DVD cover art:


Although they've retained a different angle of the original shot, it has now been plastered with the zombie-like heads of the stars, a one-liner review from Peter Travers, and a headline informing us that it's by "the Director of Seven and Panic Room," which replaces the original tagline.

It's a thinking person's film. Why not retain the more elegant cover art rather than shoot, yet again, for the lowest common denominator?

P.S. If you're thinking about getting the DVD, don't yet. There's a huge special edition coming out next year.

The Bridge - a Portrait of Suicide and Death

After visiting San Francisco and the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge, I talked with a few of my friends about the film, "The Bridge." I saw it this past weekend.

Given that the Golden Gate Bridge is the single place where the most people in the world come to commit suicide, "The Bridge" isn't what I expected it to be. It isn't a gripping political expose of the problems with Golden Gate Bridge policies (or lack thereof). Instead, filmmaker Eric Steel filmed the bridge for a whole year, where he captured many of the dozens of suicides that took place on camera, and then talked with some of the people that witnessed the plunge, or who were related to the deceased. Each person's story is different and together, they represent a patchwork of the mindset of a suicidal human being.


RSS Readers: To see the trailer, click here.

Some of the stories are haunting, while others are told as nonchalantly as though they were any other anecdote. Every one of the victims approached death differently, as did every one of their families. The film is well-made from a documentary standpoint; despite its low budget, it doesn't look like it was made on a shoestring, and Steel is decidedly a good photographer. Perhaps the film's greatest strength is that in the end, it leaves you to decide completely how to feel about the deaths: compassionate, angry, or detached.

See it if you want to see into the eyes of someone who's about to kill themselves. But beware; it will leave you slightly different than when you started watching.

DVD Cover Ruination: The Premonition DVD Cover

[This post is now part of a weekly series. Click here to see the rest of the series]

Sandra Bullock's "Premonition" was not Oscar-worthy material. Still, it had one of the better movie posters of the year, a curious clump of trees that formed what looks like Sandra Bullock's face:

Classy, eye-catching, and not-a-little creepy. It really demonstrates how powerful just a simple image can be. Imagine my surprise, then, when they decided to ruin the one good thing the film had going for it. I saw the DVD cover today. It's like the movie poster, only someone has stolen its soul and replaced it with pure evil. It seriously frightened me:
Sandra Bullock's an attractive woman, but this cover is ugliness epitomized. See my rant about DVD covers at this link.

The Importance of Being Bruno

In "Da Ali G Show," Sacha Baron Cohen deftly portrays three completely different characters: 1) Ali G, a white "gangster" from the suburb of Staines that thinks he's black, 2) Borat Sagdiyev, a journalist from Kazakhstan, and 3) Bruno, a gay Austrian fashion caricature. His chameleon-like transformation into each of these personas is a marvel to watch in every episode of the show.

Yet whenever you hear these three characters mentioned, Bruno is always the one that people take a crap on (metaphorically). Whether I'm talking with people at work or reading a review online, everyone is always careful to mention how awesome Borat and Ali G are while saying that Bruno is the character that is the least interesting and/or most unbearable.

Borat and Ali G are brilliant because they demonstrate how vastly different people, from antique store owners to United States Congressmen, struggle to communicate with someone that's so far removed from our culture (and apparently, our level of intelligence). Bruno is ostensibly supposed to reveal to us how shallow the fashion industry is:





Yet while these clips are mildly amusing, it is the way Sacha Baron Cohen takes on gay stereotypes that makes Bruno the most socially trenchant character. Essentially, Bruno's schtick consists of interviewing conservative figures and playing up his "gay" attributes to make both interviewer and interviewee incredibly uncomfortable. Here are the best examples:

Bruno at a gun show:


Bruno interviews Pastor Quinn:


Bruno at a football game in Alabama:


In an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air, Cohen commented on this last scene, saying that he felt his life was in danger with thousands of fans booing him and many of them ready to go out and literally give him a brutal beating. In this way, Cohen said, the scene revealed how anti-homosexual tendencies are actually one of the last remaining widely-accepted forms of bigotry in our society. By allowing us to see this, Cohen's Bruno character rips many of us out of our progressive, liberal cocoon and plants us, front and center, in a strange and foreign place where tolerance and acceptance have yet to take root. It forces us to stare at the visceral fear and (sometimes) hate that still pervades much of the country surrounding homosexuality. And perhaps, just a little, it has the potential to challenge us to revisit our own deeply-held stereotypes.

Despite what some people say, I still think it's a message that needs to be heard, and one that's not heard often enough.

But of course if you're not buying any of this at all, Bruno's still just really good at making people look like morons:




[Update: More audacious Bruno clips -

"Do you wish her a benign tumor or a malignant tumor?":


Bruno on Spring Break in Daytona Beach:

Abortion film wins top prize at Cannes

CNN is reporting that the top prize at Cannes this year is going to an abortion-related film. From CNN's article:

Romanian director Cristian Mungiu won the Cannes Film Festival's top prize Sunday with "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," a harrowing portrait of an illegal abortion in communist-era Romania. The low-budget, naturalistic film about a student who goes through horrors to ensure that her friend can have a secret abortion beat out 21 other movies in competition for the Riviera festival's top prize, the Palme d'Or -- including films by well-known directors like Quentin Tarantino, the Coen brothers and Wong Kar-wai.

This seems like an important film that people should see, especially if they have an active voice in the abortion debate. Illegal abortions are a horrific phenomenonn that visit violence upon the women that partake in them. Before people make a judgment about whether or not abortions should be legal, they should at least see the visual and circumstantial reality of illegal abortion. Obviously the film will have a bias, an opinion on the matter, but then again, most of the best films do.

As a side note, it's too damn hard to see these films. Hopefully a US Distributor will pick it up and we'll see it on DVD; otherwise, we'll be forced to resort to imports....

Related posts:
-A new breed of evangelicals
-More thoughts on abortion

Win a copy of "Syriana" on DVD!

[Update: This contest has ended. Keep an eye out for more contests in the future.]

Hey all,

Thought I'd try an experiment today.

A few people have been starting to read this blog regularly, so I thought I'd try to reward you for doing so. I have in my possession an unopened copy of "Syriana" on DVD (Widescreen, of course) that I would like to give away. For those of you that don't know, "Syriana" is Stephen Gaghan's "Traffic"-like examination of the oil industry. Interested?


If so, use my new "Subscribe via e-mail" feature on the right sidebar, to subscribe to my Feedburner Feed. This will enter you into the drawing to receive this DVD. By subscribing, know that you will only receive e-mail updates to my blog on days that I update.

I'll let this run for until 11:59pm on June 7th and we'll see what happens. To be in the drawing, you must remain subscribed to my blog through this date. The winner will be randomly selected; if you've won, I'll notify you by e-mail so I can get a mailing address and ship the thing out (FYI, I will probably only notify the person that won). If the response to this is good, then I'll do more contests like this again somewhere down the line.

As always, thanks for reading!
-Dave

Watch "The Road To Guantanamo," See How Far We've Fallen In The Eyes of the World

I usually don't update with too much writing on the weekends, but I'm always looking out for interesting vids and content to post up.

I found Michael Winterbottom's entire film, "The Road to Guantanamo" online. It's documentary-style and the fact that it's non-fiction gives the film its power. It's the unglamorized version of "24," a real-world version of "24," where torture often happens to innocents and doesn't produce any useful information. As you will see, the psychological and political consequences are, and will be, staggering:

Why We Fight

The following video made the front page of Digg and quickly became one of its most popular posts:


(From Youtube user randomemailaddress1)

Great animation with an important point. But it occurred to me that it doesn't really do justice to some of the nuances that are important to understanding the danger of the military industrial complex.

This led me to search for a movie I'd seen on DVD, "Why We Fight," by Eugene Jarecki, which, while far from perfect, is at least better than a 2-minute animation on the subject. I'd urge anyone to watch this film; even if you don't agree with the points, it will at least jog your thinking and hopefully make you think more critically about our military-industrial complex. I found that Youtube user Eurasure has posted the entire movie on Youtube. So, if you have the time, here it is in 4 parts:

The Trailer:

One of the most telling lines: "The defense budget is $750 billion. Profits went up last year well over 25%. When war becomes that profitable, you're going to see more of it."

Part 1:


Part 2:


Part 3:


Part 4:

Babel Music

I saw Babel this weekend.

I've been a huge fan of Innaritu since "Amores Perros." I have "21 Grams" on DVD. But this one, I wasn't too big a fan of. I'm not going to write too much here except to say that Innaritu seemed to want the moral of the story to be "We're all connected," when instead the most important lesson that should be learned from the film, I think, is "If you're a goatherder in a third-world country, don't use your rifle to take potshots at buses carrying American tourists."

Something that I really enjoyed was the last track of the film, (MINOR SPOILER AHEAD) which plays over the scene when a broken Chieko embraces her father on the balcony of their highrise. I was able to find the track on Youtube, with lightshow included(!). It's a beautiful, moving piece that veers off into modern atonalism at certain points. Overall, I like it a lot. Enjoy:
(From Youtube user jack19999)

Why Do Great Movies Get Awful DVD Cover Art?

[Welcome, Goodiebag.TV watchers! Feel free to click here and here for some of my more recent posts]

Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men" DVD is coming out this week and I strongly encourage you to watch it if you haven't. It's a fantastic film with incredible cinematography and it reaches for some deep meaning. Although I'm not sure if it ever finds it, it certainly tries hard, and that's more than can be said for many films these days.

The DVD was a must-have purchase for me until I saw the DVD cover:

What the hell is this crap? Studios don't seem to understand that for many people who buy DVDs (not everyone, but many), DVDs are considered collector's items. It's a good feeling to have a DVD on the shelf with some nice artwork on it, just like it's nice to have a good painting/photo on the wall. Unfortunately, many studios seem to slap whatever heads and/or names they can find onto the cover in the hopes that passersby at Walmart will get excited at seeing some actress' face and immediately want to buy their latest film (this DVD malady is sometimes referred to as "floating head syndrome").

This is especially infurating when the movie poster art was totally fine to begin with. "Children of Men's" own film poster was marvelous:


Beautiful yet simple. WHY WAS THIS NOT ON THE COVER OF THE DVD? Aside from wanting to get Clive Owen's face on the cover, the only reason I can think of is that the artist of this poster demanded huge royalty payments, and the DVD producer decided to turn him down and make the DVD cover art in 15 minutes with a copy of the DVD and Microsoft Paint instead.

In all seriousness though, why is DVD box art, in general, so bad? There are undoubtedly many factors that go into this, including artist fees and movie-related art availability in general. But the biggest contributor to the horrendous art collection you have sitting on your DVD shelf is undoubtedly the actual purpose of DVD box art, which differs greatly from the purpose of movie poster art. Movie poster art is supposed to make you aware of the film and to create buzz. When you're walking out of a movie theater, all you need to see is this:

That catches your eye, gets you scratching your head, thinking about the film, admiring the artwork, talking about it with friends, and generally psyched for when the movie's going to come out.

DVD box art, on the other hand, is supposed to move products off the shelves; when you've got millions of people walking through DVD sections in Walmart, Target, Best Buy and Circuit City each day, you don't want them to be confused about what the movie is about, or which movie it is they're buying. How do you avoid this? By enlarging the main actors' faces, putting as many big names on there as possible, and making sure to include unsightly review text somewhere on the cover, so that people will know what to think of the film:

"Hey isn't that the magician movie with Hugh Jackman?"
"Who cares, Scarlett Johansson looks so damn HOT. Let's buy it."

Mission accomplished.

Here are some more recent examples of movie posters and their accompanying DVD covers, and my personal take on what I think of each one:

The Departed:

This poster art is not the most beautiful that will be displayed here, but I think it has its charms. "The Departed" is displayed in gigantic, alpha-male-like font while glimpses of the stars' faces are seen in the text. The faces are striking because of their flesh-colored tones against the stark black background. Not too fancy, but it gets the job done.




Unfortunately, between the time the movie and DVD were released, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, and Leonardo Dicaprio all developed jaundice. Their skin tones have become sickeningly yellow and the bold wide font on the poster has been replaced with a crap, generic one. The top left corner shows the city of Boston tinted in a sickening blood red. I throw up in my mouth a little bit everytime I look at this.

Blood Diamond:

Again, shockingly simple. Just a huge ass diamond in the middle with a large drop of blood coming off of it in front of (again, another) stark black background. In small type, the star's names adorn the top. My curiosity is piqued....

The DVD cover art shows some sort of disastrous fire in the background; Dicaprio and Hounsou look reflectively off into the distance, unaffected by the disaster unfolding around them, while an extraordinarily awkwardly posed Connelly stares lovingly at the stoic Leo. Although it's not the worst of what we'll see, it certainly doesn't get me excited about the film. Fairly awful.




Casino Royale:

After a long hiatus, Bond is finally back! Daniel Craig and his Walther PPK (?) are great in this elegant, mysterious Casino Royale poster...

...the DVD on the other hand has an un-bow-tied Craig walking towards you against a pale gray background while a car shoots out of his side. Meanwhile a towering woman's silhouette shows off her hotel-like innards. This is not sexy. This is not exciting. This doesn't even look good. My only question is: Why?

The Last King of Scotland:

Although this poster just has one gigantic head on it, I still think it's quite effective. the stark, contrasting orange and red really make the image stand out, while the tagline "Charming. Magnetic. Murderous" makes Forrest Whitaker positively menacing.

Meanwhile, on DVD, it's the Whitaker triplets! See Whitaker smile sensually at some random woman! See him stare at the camera reflectively! See him appear to be delivering a speech! This looks like some drunken, hopped-up, Whitaker-crazed fan got her hands on some Photoshop and created this eye rape for the movie studio...while she was on acid. Finally, we come to my last example, and the one on this list that's saddest of all...


The Fountain:
Darren Aronofsky's third film, "The Fountain," was one of my favorite films of the year, a glorious sci-fi epic and love story all rolled into one. This poster, which has an image taken straight from the film, manages to capture that magic. On the tree-spaceship (don't ask, just see the movie) Hugh Jackman stares wondrously at the nebula while the memory of his wife, Izzy, looks on. Most importantly, the poster conveys the fact that the film itself is beautiful, and loaded with amazing imagery.




So what did "The Fountain" do to deserve this? Jackman is nibbling on Rachel Weisz' face while she looks off towards the sky, perhaps reflecting on why they're both glowing so brightly. Meanwhile there's a huge tree in the middle and a bizarre-looking fight going on at the bottom, with Jackman dressed as a Spaniard soldier. What market segment is this cover possibly trying to appeal to? Those that are really into romance movies, horticulture, and hack-and-slash period pics, apparently. Ironically, this might actually be who the movie DOES appeal to, but it doesn't excuse this hack job. Truly, this box art makes baby Jesus cry.

Given all this vomit and anger-inducing cover art, I'm going to vote with my dollar and wait for "The Fountain: Together We Will Live Forever Edition" and "Children of Men: Birth-Giving Director's Cut," hoping for better cover art before I plunk down my hard-earned cash on those discs.

[Update: Like what you've read? Subscribe to my blog using this link with your feed reader. Also, read an update about "The Fountain" cover art at this link. And use this link to go to my most recent post. Thanks for reading!]

Update 1:
Hey everyone,

So my story made the front page of digg and generated a ton of comments, all of which I’m grateful for (thanks for reading, even if you hate my writing style and content!) and some of which I’d like to respond to. Before that though, I just want to say thanks to my friend Devindra for his help in crafting the above post. If you have a chance, head on over to his blog and show some support. Anyway, on to the postings:

1) Posters ‘HunterTV’ and ‘soyLocoMoco’ offer some further insights into the cover design process. Digg user ‘HunterTV’ writes that “DVD covers redesign the poster artwork simply because most poster art, when resized, makes the title too small or the art too hard to make out. They're all competing against other DVDs either on the shelf or at the video store, so the faces become more prominent (especially if they're A-List actors) and the titles get bigger.” I agree that this might be the case in certain situations, and I definitely agree that that’s the rationale for the bigger faces. However, I don’t think that’s necessarily a good excuse for pushing out a bad product, especially since small DVD boxes can still hold decent, even great or iconic art on them. Example:




Digg user ‘soyLocoMoco’ writes that “my friend works for a design company making DVD covers. The art directors on the DVD boxes are the product managers at the major studios (ie, marketers with probably no design experience whatsoever). They consistently demand big type, big tits, and fireballs. There you have it.” I have no follow up to soy’s quote, except to say that it explains a lot.

2) Other users brought up some great examples of butchered movie poster art. ‘Spartandog’ brought up “The Rocketeer,” and 'DigTheDoug' brought up “Infernal Affairs,” both atrocious examples of bad DVD art. ‘Drewc1138’ brought up Star Wars as well, which is equally baffling. ‘SanTe’ brings up “History of Violence,” which I agree is a terrible DVD cover, and although I think the movie poster art is solid, I wasn’t as huge a fan as others. Also, I’m not even going to bring up “The Matrix Revolutions,” which was a DVD cover that I could have personally made myself in about 3 minutes:






3) Other random notes:

-Some people collect stamps. Some people collect baseball cards. I like to collect DVDs. It doesn’t mean that I sit around staring at my DVDs all day, or that I hang them up on the walls like paintings. It just means I like knowing that I’ve purchased a product that someone has clearly put some effort and care into.
-‘glxyjones’ makes a good point about collector’s edition DVDs. Oftentimes, studios save the good art for a double dip. As a friend of mine, Angie, pointed out to me, this punishes the biggest fans of the movie the most; the first release is often just a bare-bones with some terrible art, and the people who don’t give a damn buy it up. Meanwhile, big fans and DVD collector’s are forced to either buy this bad copy, and then buy it again, or simply wait an eternity for the second edition to come. Either way, not the best marketing practice.
-I like using the word “stark.” It should be used more in everyday conversation.

Update 2 (probably my final update):

A lot more has been said in the comments section, so I just wanted to take some time to address and acknowledge people’s points, while clarifying my own:

1) Many have provided valuable insights into the whole DVD-making and DVD-art-making process. Different artists, different design studios, studio requirements, etc. all come into play. To anyone that has shared from his/her experience, thanks! The 36 hours since this post have gone up have been very educational for me. In particular, I was intrigued by “Anonymous"'s comments, who claims to work at a marketing company that designs DVD art. S/he made the following remarks on my blog:

“The purpose of DVD art is to get people to buy it. There are tried and true marketing statistics that show that unless, it's a movie they already know they want, a lot of people take one look at a DVD cover and decide whether they will buy it or not. And more statistics that show that a lot of people will buy DVDs simply because an actor they like is on the cover. They go "ooh, Hugh Jackman!" or "ooh, Leo DiCaprio" and put the DVD in their basket. That's why so many older movies with yet-to-be-stars in them have been re-released with that star on the cover, regardless of how big their role is…

Sadly, most DVD releases aren't marketed to movie lovers and collectors, they're marketed towards mass America, particularly moderate middle-class Americans…Wait for the Special or Collector's Edition. That's the one that's marketed toward most of the people reading the post in the first place.”

First of all, I recognize that primarily it’s the studios who are fault here, not the artists or the DVD designers. What else could be the explanation? What else could possibly explain why someone would consciously transform “The Last King of Scotland” into the feel-good comedy of the year on DVD?

I also recognize that DVDs aren’t primarily marketed towards DVD collectors are movie lovers; they are mass-marketed for profit. I'm sure that millions of dollars of market research has been poured into this and that statistically speaking, DVD covers with Leo Dicaprio's face sell more than DVD covers with bleeding diamonds on them, but surely isn't it possible to find a happy medium? There are plenty of DVDs that have found mass-market appeal that still manage to have fantastic cover art (For examples, see “The Sopranos” (and other HBO series), “The Usual Suspects,” “Empire of the Sun,” “Schindler’s List”…just DVDs off the top of my head that are popular yet manage to have a nice looking DVD cover). I think it can often, though not always, be possible to please both DVD collectors and everyday DVD purchasers, but studios are just too lazy sometimes, and this is what I have a problem with.

With regards to waiting for the Special/Collector’s Edition, year's later, there’s still not a lot of transparency with regards to those editions. Many bloggers/writers have already complained long and hard about double-dipping, so I’m not going to devote too much time to it here. I’m only going to say that the day in which studios consistently announce something like “Children of Men SPECIAL EDITION comes out June 15th 2007” the same day that the bare bones edition is released, is the day that I quit complaining about the awfulness like the DVD covers you’ve seen in this post. Obviously companies like New Line did something like this for the Lord of the Rings DVDs, but it is far from being a widespread practice. We all know George Lucas, with his 341 editions of Star Wars is the worst offender in this regard.

2) Several people remarked on Digg (and undoubtedly, others agree) that anyone who chooses NOT to buy a DVD of a movie he likes just because of the box art sounds like a douchebag. I agree; it does sound douchebag-like. But let me just make clear; if it’s a DVD of a movie I love, like Children of Men for example, I’m definitely going to own it eventually. DVD cover art can't stop me from enjoying movies. However, I’m not going to plunk down $20 of hard-earned cash for it on release day if the box looks like crap. I’ll either wait for the special collector’s edition, or wait for the price to go down. Everyone has a price. Mine is $8 for aChildren of Men DVD with that cover.