Have yourself a post-apocalyptic Christmas

Have yourself a post-apocalyptic Christmas

May your day be doomed

From now on

Starvation fills the world with gloom.

Here we are not as in olden days

Happy golden days of yore

Viggo Mortenson tries to protect his son

From cannibals and earthquakes

And Zombieland-like landscapes once more.

With global warming and peak oil

And species dying left and right,

James Cameron reinvents nature

In 3-D Avatar,

So we can feel alright.

Who would have thought

Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr.

would make the sedate Sherlock Holmes

a manic action figure?

Who would think after watching

There Will Be Blood in our Speedos

That Daniel Day Lewis

Would mimic Marcello Mastroianni

And be chased around by women

crying Guido, Guido, Guido!?

Have yourself a post-apocalyptic Christmas

Don't despair, be thankful!

Alvin and the Chipmunks

Have arrived

in the world's first Squeakquel.

Through the years

We will all watch together

If the Fates allow

Meryl Streep flirt with Alec Baldwin

To cheer up the post-menopausal crowd

Have yourself a merry post-apocalyptic Christmas now!

Notable links of the film and media kind--December 17, 2009

---The digital future of magazines

---Avatar's feminist side

---The evolution of horror movie poster design

---The Princess and the Frog comparative analysis

---9 films that influenced Inglourious Basterds

---The noughties and our yearning for chaos:

"One of the most striking things about the Noughties is that when terrible things did happen – when planes really did start falling out of the sky – we greeted them with barely concealed excitement.

We watched them being replayed over and over again on CNN, drinking in the wild overestimates of casualty numbers and nodding along enthusiastically as experts confidently predicted all the cataclysmic consequences to follow. It was a form of mass hysteria – something akin to Freud’s death wish, but writ large.

If the past 10 years had one defining characteristic it was that they allowed human beings to give full expression to their yearning for chaos, one of their darkest unconscious desires. It was the decade in which people’s appetite for destruction became almost insatiable.

I don’t mean that an above average number of natural disasters occurred – though, God knows, we had our share, what with the south-east Asian Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina.

Nor do I mean that the past 10 years witnessed a significant increase in acts of terrorism or that many of them were perpetrated by suicide bombers in thrall to a sinister death cult.

Rather, it was the way these phenomena were latched on to, the apocalyptic fantasies they gave rise to. It was as if people wanted the world to be consumed in an orgiastic frenzy of ultra-violence, whether at the hand of Mother Nature or an Islamist cell in possession of a ‘dirty bomb’."

---Top shaggy dog films of the 00s

---The difficulties of defining mumblecore

---Perhaps the most important movie out there

---The decade-defining romance of Mulholland Drive

---Dan North explains the reveal

---Fantastic Mr. Fox links

---"Pop Ate My Heart": Lady Gaga analyzed:

Lady Gaga does not abandon the visual component of her music. Rather than the videos being ancillary products designed to promote the music, Gaga treats the tracks on the album as equal opportunities for visual expression. This is a one of Gaga’s principal aims as an artist; she has said that “It's the artist's job to create imagery that matches the music—something powerful that will really grab the audience and create a memorable impression,” and claims that

"What has been lost in pop music these days is the combination of the visual and the imagery of the artist, along with the music—and both are just as important. So, even though the carefree nature of the album is something that people are latching onto right away about my stuff, I hope they will take notice of the interactive, multimedia nature of what I'm trying to do. The things I like to do and the theatrics, I like to incorporate them into the choreography. With my music, it's a party, it's a lifestyle, and it's about making the lifestyle the forefront of the music."

---Celebrity, Academic Style's decade review

---Remembering Kurosawa

---Mad Men reinvents men's fashion

---Lastly, early David Bowie

Cinderella, Tiana, and Disney's abysmal history: 8 notes on The Princess and the Frog

"We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective." --Disney CEO Michael Eisner's internal memo

"I mean, really, Ariel gets a calypso-singing crustacean, Cinderella has mice that can sew, and the black princess gets a raggedy half-toothless firefly – when she isn’t spending the movie being the animal sidekick herself." --Shannon Prince

"The Princess and the Frog couldn’t just be a movie. It had to be a moment, complete with tie-in merchandise carefully trotted out well in advance of the premiere: The Dress! The Doll! The Hair Products!

Given all that, Disney’s first princess in 12 years has a lot to live up to. And its filmmakers tread a fine line between attempting authenticity and keeping the fantasy alive. This being Disney, there are certain tropes that must be in place: Spirited Heroine sets out on a journey. Encounters all sorts of travails along the way, travails which will prompt her to break into song. Animal friends help her in her journey; they, too, can’t help breaking into song. Handsome, often cross-cultural, prince pops up, but evil forces conspire to keep them apart. He sings, too. Back in the day, the Handsome Prince usually saved the day, but this being 2009, the Spirited Heroine generally gets to save the day—and Handsome Prince—thereby actualizing her own Inner Princess. The Handsome Prince and the Actualized Princess hook up; live happily ever after, etc., etc." --Teresa Wiltz

"LaToya Peterson, editor of the website Racialicious.com — which has been tracking much of the controversy surrounding The Princess and the Frog — says that she is hopeful and sceptical when it comes to seeing the movie. `I`m hopeful because Disney was so quick in making changes to make sure the portrayal of a black girl is a lot less stereotypical,' she says from her office in Washington. `Then again, Disney has such an abysmal history of representing characters of colour. I mean, they’re usually represented as animals.'" --Chris Ayre

"Who wants a puppy?" --Big Daddy La Bouff (John Goodman) in The Princess and the Frog

1) What exactly is Disney's abysmal history in terms of its depictions of race? Cracked.com provides a nice eye-opening summary.

2) What are some of the changes made to Tiana's character (Anika Noni Rose) in the course of making The Princess and the Frog? During the movie's composition, the writers at first depicted her as maid, but in in the movie's final incarnation, she's a waitress/aspiring restaurateur for much of the movie. Also, her original name was Maddie, but that name was changed as it was seen as being too close to Mammy. How else did Disney seek redemption? They visited with Oprah three years ago, sought her approval, and gave her the part of Tiana's mother Eudora.

3) I confess that I liked much of The Princess and the Frog, in part because I could sense the corporate media behemoth squirming as it tried to distance itself from its usual evil ideology.

4) If you study different versions of the Cinderella myth, you learn how Cinderella used to be wily, self-sufficient, and humorously conniving in her efforts to get the prince, that is, until the official Disney Cinderella came along in 1950. Disney's Cinderella passively waited around until a bumbling fairy godmother, some hard-working animals, and a handsome prince catapults her effortlessly to royal status. Now we have the Cinderella complex, popularized by Colette Dowling, which, in the words of the Wikipedia article on the topic, "is based on the idea of women that the story portrays, as being beautiful, graceful and polite but who cannot be strong independent characters themselves (although Cinderella does exhibit independence based on her skills and determination), and who must be rescued by an outside force, usually a man (e.g. the Prince)." Given the parallel existence of the Peter Pan syndrome, one wonders how much Disney's sugary example has messed up millions of boys and girls for life.

5) In contrast to the Disneyfied Cinderella, Tiana makes it very clear that she's willing to work hard to obtain the restaurant she wants in 1920's era New Orleans. So she waitresses and saves her tips in cans until she can raise the down payment on a beat-up old building. She's so intent on getting as she says "what you want through hard work," Prince Naveen (Bruno Campos) chides her for being a "stick in the mud" when they are both frogs. He says "You do not know how to have fun," but she proves him wrong when she helps defeat some frog-hunting rednecks. I imagine Disney animators included the 3 Stooges-esque rednecks to counterbalance any charges of stereotyping attached to the snaggle-toothed Cajun firefly named Ray (Jim Cummings) who says things like "follow the bouncing butt" before breaking into song.

6) Given Disney's tendency to lazily plagiarize from or allude to its earlier movies, what is the major influence of The Princess and the Frog? I think The Jungle Book. Once the storyline shifts to the Bayou, Louis the lovable jazz horn gator (Michael-Leon Wooley) reminded me of Baloo the Bear crossed with Louis Armstrong. The animators acknowledge the debt to The Jungle Book when Mama Odie shows up sporting Kaa, the snake as her helpmate.

7) I am a huge fan of New Orleans, and The Princess and the Frog revels in the city's rich cultural traditions. I liked all of the references to beignets, Mardi Gras royalty, gumbo (although Tiana repeatedly only needs to add two squirts of Tabasco to save any problematic gumbo in the film), Sidney Bechet, voodoo, the city's celebrated graveyards, and zydeco music.

8) Does The Princess and the Frog help the Disney corporation make amends for its abysmal history? Not entirely, but I found it entertaining to see them try. As long as they profit on the "spectacle of innocence," it's gratifying to see some signs of conscience, signs of guilt. Tiana's knowing, slightly ironic stance in the film calls attention to the underlying hypocrisies of Disney's usual song and dance.

Notable film and media links--December 11, 2009

---When Indie stars sell out

---Lester Bangs didn't like the Cramps

---The Parkour movement in Russia

---Chuck Klosterman talks about the media

---The Athabasca oil sands problem, nicely animated

---A Japanese music video for the channel surfer with an extremely short attention span

---"Friendship" in the age of Facebook:

"Yet what, in our brave new mediated world, is friendship becoming? The Facebook phenomenon, so sudden and forceful a distortion of social space, needs little elaboration. Having been relegated to our screens, are our friendships now anything more than a form of distraction? When they've shrunk to the size of a wall post, do they retain any content? If we have 768 "friends," in what sense do we have any? Facebook isn't the whole of contemporary friendship, but it sure looks a lot like its future. Yet Facebook—and MySpace, and Twitter, and whatever we're stampeding for next—are just the latest stages of a long attenuation. They've accelerated the fragmentation of consciousness, but they didn't initiate it. They have reified the idea of universal friendship, but they didn't invent it. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that once we decided to become friends with everyone, we would forget how to be friends with anyone. We may pride ourselves today on our aptitude for friendship—friends, after all, are the only people we have left—but it's not clear that we still even know what it means."

---Bella and the geek monster

---The A-Z of Spike Jones

---The future of Apps:

"Apps themselves aren't new--they're just the `programs' and `software' of old, repackaged and given a totally new spin by the mobile net--but they've become prominent because of advancing technology. And in a World where some TVs now run apps, where toddling babies can wirelessly Tweet what they're up to and cybernetic limbs seem closer to reality, then the only conclusion is that apps will soon be powering/tweaking/boosting/personalizing every bit of future tech in our lives."

---Dead malls

---Behind the scenes of The Princess and the Frog

---Skhizein, an award-winning short film

---Trippy bubbles (nevermind the statistics)

---Facebook's latest privacy "debacle"

---Photoshop fail, failing again

---A day in the internet

---Lastly, Orson Welles none too thrilled with rosebud

The Film Doctor's ten most disliked films of 2009

10) Confessions of a Shopaholic

I was appalled by John Goodman's grotesque break dancing and Kristin Scott Thomas' sad imitation of Miranda Priestly, but the worst thing was the nightmarish talking mannequins.

9) The Informers

I like some of Bret Easton Ellis' work, but this instantly dated movie based on his collection of early, sloppy, anecdotal short stories becomes an exercise in pseudo-hip nihilistic enervation. The movie climaxes with one young actor proclaiming a need for "someone to tell him what's right and what's wrong" when in truth he needs a better agent.

8) Bride Wars

I spent much of the movie wondering what had happened to Kate Hudson, and what was the deal with her raccoon-like eye shadow?

7) The Twilight Saga: New Moon

I confess to kind of liking Twilight, but with the sequel I got bored with Bella, bored with Forks, Washington, the flannel shirts, the proliferation of shirtless monsters, etc. Edward Cullen's once contemptuous aristocratic snottiness became banal.

6) Bruno

See the people twitch with shock and outrage at Sacha Baron Cohen's mean-spirited antics. See them trapped within the confines of the screen. Ha, ha, ha! Later, they will sue, sue, sue.

5) Angels and Demons

The most complacent twaddle with the most convenient detective/archeological investigation I've ever seen, with a Saturday-afternoon-TV-movie gimmick of various bishops getting killed off to create urgency.

4) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

An obvious choice, but I did spend several days afterwards recuperating in bed. I've largely blocked it from my memory.

3) 2012

I couldn't bring myself to review it. I normally like the idea of the end of the world. Now I can only wonder at John Cusack's personal apocalypse--how he had to bring himself to say, with a straight face, over and over, in interview after interview, how he admired the characters of the "elegantly written" screenplay.

2) Post Grad

I have nothing against Alexis Bledel (aside from her persistent loud yammering in the house as my significant other rewatches Gilmore Girls on DVD again), but this unfunny, unromantic travesty insults both Michael Keaton and one of my personal heroes--Carol Burnett. The film is grindingly, achingly lame, inept, painful, and demeaning to all concerned.

1) Land of the Lost

Adapted from a beloved Saturday TV show, Land of the Lost sounds the death knell of irony, immature guy films, and, I hope, Will Ferrell's career. Watch Chaka grope poor Anna Friel as random crap happens on a freeze-dried alternative-universe-with-a-dinosaur set. A good justification for the apocalypse if there ever was one.

Notable film and media links--December 3, 2009

---Is Colin Firth the "best actor of his generation"?

---Sign of the apocalypse or media stunt? Man twitters at the altar.

---Charlie Brown animator Bill Melendez and his influence on Wes Anderson (with thanks to Tracey).

---It's about time: eco-friendly killing.

---North by Northwest on acid. In the same vein, Domo Darko.

---Ed Howard and Jason Bellamy converse about Lawrence of Arabia:

ED HOWARD: What I appreciated about the film was how subtle it was, how introspective it was for an epic. In some ways, a lot of it doesn't even feel like a conventional epic. Sure, it's long, and filled with those widescreen crowd scenes that are pretty much the aesthetic bread and butter for the genre. It's even packed with Biblical allusions and Christ allegories, aligning it with the grand religious tales, from The Ten Commandments to The Passion of the Christ, that always seem to be prime subjects for these spectacles. But what sets Lawrence of Arabia apart from typical epics (which generally underwhelm me) is its texture. David Lean has a real eye—and ear; the film's soundtrack, beyond its bombastic score, is stunning—for details, for carving out emotions and themes from the smallest touches.

---Kubrick and Napoleon.

---Major directors discuss the movies that matters to them:

Sally Potter: "As a child, I probably knew every frame of Monsieur Hulot's Holiday. I knew the sequences off by heart. I think what indelibly struck me was not so much the comedy of it, which often felt slow, as the compassion in the observation: this observation of small moments, a swinging door. The emptiness of the soundtrack, which just has one or two effects dropped into it. Almost the feeling of it as a kind of meditation on loneliness and the social behaviour of people attempting to have a good time. It was the tragic part of the comedy that impressed me and the minimalism of the means with which it was realised. I think as a child I was experiencing it as a minimalist transcendent meditation more than as the work of a comic genius.

I just quickly looked up something about Tati and discovered something which I hadn't known before, which was that he lived most of his life in poverty, having to raise mortgages on his previous films to raise money for the next ones. The solitariness of that position as a film-maker I realised was imbuing the films themselves with the melancholy. I found that a fascinating piece of hidden information about the work."

---The evolution of the hipster.

---As part of the recent typography craze, check out this perfect video mash-up between the excellent Helvetica and Lady Gaga's work called "Neutra Face."

---Amongst the many best films of the decade/year lists, I liked John Water's, Richard Brody's, and Martin Scorsese's best of the 90s.

---Mini-mall marketing genius.

---Time to throw the laptop away: Cormac McCarthy's Olivetti.

---The art of getting noticed: Frederico Alvarez's Panic Attack!

---It is true that you can get noticed and published quickly thanks to Twitter.

---Our industrialized wasteland.

---Lastly, the mysterious Charlotte Gainsbourg/Beck video "Heaven Can Wait."

9 Reasons Why Fantastic Mr. Fox is the Coolest Film

1) FMF shows how sly indie smarts can defy the corporate factory farm machine.

2) The film suggests there is a subversive affinity between artists and thieves. Somewhat like Godard and Truffaut in their youth, Mr. Fox is a chicken thief who has difficulty kicking the habit. Anderson inspires us by ripping off what inspires him, including allusions to Toy Story (a character trapped in a milk crate), The Third Man (the sewer sequence), The Man in the White Suit (Bean has an apple cider machine that makes the same noise that Alec Guinness'character's invention makes), Bonnie and Clyde (men with guns hiding in the bushes for an ambush), and West Side Story (Rat (Willem Dafoe) snaps his fingers in a way reminiscent of the movie's choreography).

3) FMF juxtaposes the passionate instincts of the wild with Anderson's trademark cerebral creative control. Fox cannot help himself because of his wild nature. Late in the film, a wolf appears in the distance. Anderson keeps the wolf in an extreme long shot, and even though the wolf shares with Fox a paw pump of solidarity, the wildest creature stays aloof, separate, and by implication superior to the rest of the animals who have to find ways to accommodate humanity.

4) In every shot, FMF celebrates the detail. Mr. Fox has an impeccable fashion sense--thin ties and corduroy suits. Wes Anderson took photographs of all of the furniture in Roald Dahl's house, had miniature versions made, and scattered them throughout the movie. I found FMF annoying in its way, because so many ingenious details and inventive shot compositions demand a re-viewing. One feels obliged to play the film slowly on DVD and freeze-frame scenes to catch everything.

5) I'm not sure, but it seems that The Darjeeling Limited becomes part of a train set in FMF that consoles Kristofferson when he is blue.

6) FMF treats the difficulties of parenting and sibling self-esteem issues without being annoying.

7) FMF shares with Watership Down a concern with the way humans violate the land for petty reasons.

8) FMF celebrates the moment. Anderson makes sure to add some unexpected flourish to every scene. Even in the midst of an action scene, he will pause to show how Kylie (Wallace Wolodarsky), Mr. Fox's dim but loyal possum sidekick, did have "blueberries" written on his paw, even though he forgot to bring them. We also learn, again in the midst of an exciting sequence, that Kylie's good about paying off his debts, thereby earning a nice credit card. After the rat dies, the gang has a poignant moment, thinking that the rat did redeem himself, but then Mr. Fox says with metaphysical aplomb, "At the end of the day, he's still just a dead rat in a garbage pail behind a Chinese restaurant."

9) Sly, conniving, resourceful, devious--what creature is cooler than a fox? Just as Mr. Fox and his gang elude the evil farmers Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, so does Fantastic Mr. Fox eludes the viewer's attempt to apprehend it. I've never seen such an intellectually engrossing children's movie.