The Picking of Sides

When I was younger I had a much easier time telling right from wrong and good from bad, but as I aged those lines became blurrier and blurrier. I've been lucky to travel and live in different places for extended periods of time. I was born in Latvia and then my parents moved to Israel. When my parents divorced my mom and I moved to the United States where I've spend the lion share of my life and have been lucky to have friends of different ethnicities, races and backgrounds. I've spent months in India, Malaysia, and Hong Kong, among others, and got to know the people. In my experience, there really isn't much that separates us. We want the same things and have the same biases. We can be kind and noble, but none of us are without sin. And it has nothing to do with the color of our skin, our religions, nationalities, or tribal affiliations. No matter how much we'd like to think otherwise.

But, and there's always a but, there is something in our DNA that predisposes us to need an "other". The "other" not only defines "us" but is often handy to project our fears and biases on to. We might not want to admit it, but we all do it.

The below interview with Etgar Keret captures this much better than I ever could.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/books/etgar-keret-israel-interview.html?fbclid=IwAR0DFYmpyna5ohCiMe6QFwYXfiUize64cEF73Lh6tOG2UgbUWzS0FAYBJ8c

Is it me or is it the movies? Part IV

Between my teens and well into my forties I probably averaged 1-3 movie theater visits per week. It was mostly a way of self-medicating. Trading my reality for a couple of hours in one which wasn't my own. It didn't really matter what movie was playing. It could be triple bill in the Oriental of The Master of the Flying Guiliotine, The Toolbox Murders, and Cleopatra Jones, followed by a walk over to the Water Tower and Being There. Some of these theaters had their first showtime at 8am. It wasn't unusual for me to see almost everything which was released in any given month. And if I ever ran out there was always the Parkway or the Fine Arts. 

In the present it's been at least two years since I've been in a movie theater. COVID accounts for some of this, but is it also because not only the movies might have changed but also how and where we watch them? I have a 75 inch big screen HD TV with a Dolby sound bar, a couple of remotes and a subwoofer under my comfy couch. Multiple streaming services with the ability to pause, fast forward, rewind and super slow-mo. The fridge is within walking distance as is the bathroom. So why did I leave this alternate reality paradise? Bond, James Bond. 

If ever there was franchise which needs the big silver screen I can't think of one at the moment. And that's how I found myself at the Regal City North 14 IMAX & 4DX. I don't much care about the IMAX and 4DX and 14 is for the number screens. I was in screen number 9 and as an added bonus could occasionally listen to the sound track from screens 7 and 11. I don't usually have an issue with digital projection, but the ambient lighting might have been off so everything on the screen had a slight gray tinge to it. That's the price you pay for digital. The sound was good, but the same was true for screens 7 and 11. The film itself unfortunately wasn't the best send off for Daniel Craig. It had the traditional Bond elements, but it was as if the Brocollis decided to do a Merchant-Ivory version of an Ian Fleming novel. The acting was fine. Love Connery, but Craig is still the best Bond. The villains were villainous. The female characters attractive and the cars and scenery beautiful. Not sure if it was the writing or the direction, but it just didn't work. If nothing else On Her Majesty's Secret Service finally has some competition for the weakest Bond film. 

So if Bond can't save the movie theater is that the death bell tolling for the movie theater experience? 

P.S. Random observations from watching 30 minutes of trailers:

I have no desire whatsoever to watch anything in which Roland Emmerich is involved. 

Will Smith is a good actor but he is always Will Smith regardless of what he is in. 

I thought Jon Bernthal was a one note actor. He is not. 

Is Jessica Chastain following the Charlize Theron path? Fine if she is. Just asking. 

Speaking of Chastain's path. As long as Hollywood is willing to make movies like The 355, why spend all this energy arguing about whether or not the next James Bond should be a female? Leave James alone. He has suffered enough. Maybe just spinoff Miss Moneypenny. I'd pay to watch that. 

Love trailers, but 30 minutes is too much of a good thing.

The problem with GREED

"Greed is good!" Gordon Gekko, fictional character. "Greedy people, competing, make the world go round." Paul Krugman, nobel prize winning economist. “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” Jesus Christ, Savior, son of God. For the record, I am not an economist or an MBA, but I think I can grasp the basic principles of how modern economies are supposed to work. If you want to make money you provide either goods or services that people are willing to pay for. In order to provide those goods or services you need to pay other people to help you. If the demand for your goods or services rises you need to hire more people. These people use the money you pay them to buy goods and services, yours and others, which creates more demand and more jobs. As more and more people start doing this and more and more people are needed to create those goods or provide services you need to pay them more and more money to come work for you which gives them more money to spend and buy more goods or services and everyone lives happily ever after. If you decide to cheat or shortchange the goods or services, or slack off in any way, or stop improving, the people who pay you for those goods and services will stop paying you and pay someone else who does it better. This creates efficiency and self-regulates the economy. While there might be someone out there, I personally know of no one who shows up to work with the desire to make less tomorrow than they did yesterday. Off the top of my head I can't think of anyone who spends any time trying to figure out how to pay more for services and goods than they are worth. Bad business fail, good business succeed, everyone benefits and lives happily ever after. Greed, as Gordon Gekko and Paul Krugman say, is good. One small problem. We are all flawed beings. I think that's what the Savior guy might have been alluding to. I've always found it more than just a little ironic that, for example, usually the same people who want to unregulate GREED want to regulate LUST and those who want to unregulate LUST want to regulate GREED. Why one one and not the other? Wouldn't both wreak the same havoc with our decision making?

It's Their Fault!

The election is over. Depending on how you voted it’s either the dawn of a new era of unimagined prosperity or the beginning of the apocalypse. The people have spoken and if one thing is clear beyond any shadow of doubt, and cuts across all demographic groups, political affiliations, ideology or lack thereof, it’s that It’s Their Fault!

Pick your choice from any of the below list. Multiple selections allowed and encouraged:

• Immigrants
• White Men
• Whitelash
• Backlash
• Cultural Elites
• Political Elites
• Economic elites
• The unwashed masses
• Facebook
• The Media
• Wall Street
• Main Street
• Muslims
• Christians
• City folk
• Country yokels
• Anger
• Ignorance
• Greed
• Any of the seven deadly sins
• Polls
• Lists
• Things left off lists

The country might be divided but this is the one thing we can all agree on. The other is wrong (horribly and indisputably) and they’ve never been this wrong before. Ever. Not even close. Only one thing seems to be missing. An actual debate of the issues and policy.

Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than the immigration debate. For the record, I’m an immigrant. Not only am I an immigrant but I was an illegal, or undocumented if you prefer (for the life of me I can’t understand the debate over the semantic label which regardless of preference basically amounts to the same thing), immigrant before everything got sorted out and I got naturalized. I understand better than most the complexity, issues, pain and hardship involved. Furthermore, I voted for Clinton. I can’t think of a single candidate who was running, or might have run, in any party, who I would have voted for Trump over. I am willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt, but pretty sure four years from now we will be worse off. Now that that’s out of the way let me present two examples of talking at each other rather than talking.

On the left side of the political spectrum there is the issue of Trump proposing immediately deporting 2-3 million illegal immigrants who are also convicted of crimes. Rather than debating the pros and cons of the proposal this is getting swept up in the general debate of the pros and cons of immigration. Why? Can anyone really come up with valid reasons not to deport people who have been convicted of crimes? We are not talking about citizens. We are talking about illegal immigrants who have done nothing to contribute to the larger society. Why sweep them up into the greater issue and tar and feather the majority of illegal, or legal, immigrants who commit no crimes, work hard and are decent and law abiding citizens guilty of nothing but wanting a better life for themselves? I understand that not every individual in that “criminal” bucket is a criminal or guilty of any crimes, but that’s not really what the debate needs to be about. It’s a side issue. Most reasonable people can agree that illegal immigrants who committed crimes should be deported. Arguing against that merely makes reasonable people question motives and gets us further and further from a solution.

On the right side of the political spectrum there is the issue of building a wall and limiting immigration to create jobs and make America more secure. There is no evidence of either one of those working. Look around you. Do you see any illegal immigrants working in well-paying jobs? Let’s assume you have zero immigration do you think there will be an increase in well-paying jobs? Why would there be? Eliminating illegal immigration will have no impact. Those aren’t the jobs the jobs illegal immigrants are filling. Maybe you were thinking about legal immigration and H-1B visas? In 2014 there were 162,239 H-1B visas issued. Perhaps an impressive number but a tiny fraction of the total 140,000,000 jobs. There is no cause and effect. Stop pretending there is. Okay. Jobs isn’t your real issue. Security is. What makes you think that building a wall will make you more secure? I check the news pretty regularly and I don’t really see an increase of terrorist attacks? The ones I have seen can pretty much be counted on the fingers of a single hand. Contrast this with the usual crime, mass shooting, etc., statistics. Shouldn’t those be addressed first? Neither terrorists nor illegal immigrants are committing those. Do you think that a committed terrorist, or a narco-terrorist for that matter, be daunted by a wall? They’ll just turn back? It doesn’t work that way.

But enough of being divisive and talking at you. Pretty sure none of the above will change anyone’s mind. I rest easy in the knowledge that it’s not my fault. It’s yours and on that we can all agree.

Is it me or is it the movies? Part III

An article about a remake of Ocean’s 11 with an all-female cast appeared in my newsfeed recently. Skimmed through it. Skimmed through the comments. Some pros. Some cons. The usual casting arguments and the inevitable personal flame wars. However, nowhere did I see anyone mentioning the elephant in the screening room. That this is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea!

And no. It’s not because it objectifies women in film (or depending on your political leanings objectifies men). It’s not because it doesn’t address the wage gap in film (or depending on your political leanings politicizes film casting). It’s not because it casts (insert actress of choice) as (character of choice) when it should cast (actress of choice) as (character of choice)! It’s not because they should remake (insert favorite movie of all time) first. It’s not because … HEY!!! OBAMACARE SUX. VOTE TRUMP!

It’s because (SPOILER ALERT!) … it’s a gimmick. Nothing more. It has nothing to do with anything other than a marketing talking on point on some Hollywood exec’s power point presentation. Don’t know who pitched this and who greenlit this, but I am pretty sure the conversation went like this:

Pitcher: Ocean’s 11, but with women in the main roles.

Greenlighter: Go!

I don’t claim to be a Hollywood insider (in the interest of full disclosure, however, I was an extra on The Package once) or much of an expert (I did, however, see The Player), but I have watched a lot of films and over the years it seems as if the reasons to make films have now been reduced to their most simplistic basic principles.

Superheroes? Go!

3D? Go!

Tom Cruise? Has he done or said anything stupid lately? No. Go!

Remake (insert old popular TV show title)? Go!

Remake (insert old popular film title)? Go!

Hot selling novel? Go!

Spiel…? Say no more! Go!

Don’t get me wrong. I am not a Cahiers du Cinema subscriber (okay, the fact that I know that there is a Cahiers du Cinema taints me a little bit, but in my defense I don’t know what Cahiers means and I left off the doohickey over the e in Cinema). I realize show business has always been a business first. It’s first and main objective, and always has been, is to put butts in seats by whatever means necessary and reap as much financial rewards as possible. Awards and critical acclaim are all nice, but they don’t pay the rent. Nor am I unaware of the fact that the rent for making films is mighty high. The risks great. Hollywood invented creative accounting so it’s hard to give a definitive answer, but most estimates put the average Hollywood budget to get a movie from alpha to omega somewhere between $100 million to $150 million. The reasons for this are complex, but mostly they are the creation of Hollywood itself. It’s mostly due to egos and about who makes more than whom. It’s about the progression from making $3 million in the box office from a $1 million budget and being satisfied with that to wanting to make $999 million and therefore now having to invest $333 million. Either way, that’s a lot of risk and if it was your money you too would want some safeguards to guarantee a return on your investment.

And yes, I realize that it was always this way. All you need to do is pick up some books about the old (old being a relative term to your own age) Hollywood moguls and stars or just Wikipedia them to see that it was so. But that’s not the elephant either.

Nor does the elephant have anything to do with the age old art v. commerce argument. I like Tarkovski as much as the other guy. I saw Stalker twice. His mastery of ambience is second to none. He is a true artist. Will I ever watch Stalker a third time? Only if you pay me. Citizen Kane? Greatest movie ever made. 400 blows? One of my favorite films. Bicycle Thief, Rules of the Game, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Battleship Potemkin, Medium Cool, Easy Rider, Apocalypse Now? Seriously! Don’t insult me by even asking. I can appreciate when films become something larger than just mere entertainment. I relish the moments when they do. But I also happen to love comic books. If it has Marvel in the title I will see it at some point. Not a huge fan of 3D but I did go to see Hugo simply for that reason because I wanted to see what Scorsese will do with it. Tom Cruise I can take or leave, but if Jackie Chan makes a movie odds are I will see it some point. Taranti… I’ll see it! Long story short, if I have a life or death choice between a Terrence Malick film and whatever the latest entry is in the Fast and Furious franchise is I will probably go with Furious and fast. Not proud of it, but I’ve had a very long day.

Let’s get serious and dig deep here. Why do I/we watch? To be entertained. What entertains me and whether I am one of the masses or the ruling culture elites is debatable, but when all is said and done I/we all watch to be entertained. Some might be entertained by things blown up real good. Others by stupid teenagers in skimpy clothing running into seemingly deserted houses that are rumored to be haunted while an escaped convict\mental hospital escapee\the unpopular ugly kid with a sharp object fetish is on a rampage. Or perhaps you are entertained by metaphysical ruminations on the nature of the universe and what does it all mean shot in soft focus and slightly off angle?

Regardless of what that is what really entertains us? It’s not the casting. It’s not the genres. It’s not the format. It’s not the marketing. All play a role, but none of them are the elephant in this room. It’s the story and how we feel while being a part of it. To borrow AMC’s slogan: Story Matters Here! [Sidebar: While I love the tagline and think AMC’s Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, and even Hell on Wheels are excellent examples of everything that is good about that slogan, AMC itself is part of the problem due to how they choose to present their shows. Do we really need three episode mini-seasons with long gaps in between? Does it make the story matter more? Does it give the creators more time to create a more mattering story? Does it matter to the audience? No. The only reason they are doing it is so that they would have a longer period to charge advertisers higher rates. I predict it will eventually fail and 5 years from now we will be talking about how do you remember when there were really good shows on AMC. And yes. I know HBO actually started this long gap thing, but their reasons are different since they don’t care about advertisers, and at least in between gaps they take chances and release really good shows so it takes some of the sting out.]

Ask yourself this question. When you talk with your friends and peers, whether they be wine cork sniffing caviar truffle soufflé eaters or beer swilling hot dog heavy on the mustard munchers, what was the last movie you talked about or really excited about seeing in recent years? I am not talking about your occasional James Bond, Bridge of Spies, Imitation Game, Guardians of the Universe, Interstellar, Jurassic Something somethings. And please, please, please don’t anyone mention that story that began (in the middle) of a galaxy long ago and far away… These are to be expected. They’re merely statistics. No more than expected blips. Sooner or later there will be something X. Either due to scarcity or by actual merit.

Now ask yourself this question. When you talk with your friends and peers about TV shows which TV shows do you talk about or can’t wait to watch? Just off the top of my head and with no particular genre or target audience in mind here are mine: Game of Thrones, Mad Men, The Shield, Breaking Bad, Gotham, Fargo, 30 Rock, South Park, 24, Walking Dead, Rescue Me, Nip and Tuck, Downton Abbey,  Sherlock… The list can go on and on. We can argue about the relative merits of any individual show, but that’s not really the point. These are shows that people feel passionately about. What was the last movie you felt truly passionate about? I can’t think of many. Or at least not as passionately as the audiences of these shows feel about their shows. If you were to go back 20 years or so I can give you a full list of films people felt passionately about. TV shows? Not so much. Of course it’s possible it’s simply because I’ve seen so many films and I am getting older and older and ultimately you will see the same story no matter what package it comes in, but I don’t think so. I’ve seen many TV shows over that time span as well and I stopped watching TV because I didn’t find anything on it all that entertaining and have now resumed because I find it to be so. Pretty sure it’s not more entertaining because TVs now have bigger screens and HD.

Is there any real difference between films and TV shows? Media geeks can excuse themselves from answering this question. I know there are, but this isn’t about the mechanics of the relative media. It’s about the entertainment value each brings to the audience and as such they’re very close together. Is making a TV show cheaper than a movie? Not really when you boil everything down to their basic components. Each has advantages and disadvantages. Are television creative and business types any less greedy than their film counterparts? Don’t think so. Is there more creative freedom in TV? Are you nuts? So if none of these things is the elephant what is? Story, story, story.

TV started taking chances. They put the cart and horse (or elephant as the case may be to untangle my own metaphorical meanderings) back in the correct order. TV realized that, yes, story matters. Start there. Write the story you are interested in telling. If you tell it well and give it time it will find an audience. There will still be plenty of time to run focus groups and tailor for demographics and find product tie ins and talk about corporate synergies and vertical integrations and make lots and lots of money. First be good and be patient. The rewards will come. Don’t rush them. Don’t underestimate your audience. Make the story matter. Everything else is secondary.

In Hollywood this is reversed. Story shmory. Who is the star and how much did their property bring back last time out? I know this will be a story about a Holocaust camp survivor taking in Syrian refuges, but have you considered Adam Sandler? There is X% of people who will see an Adam Sandler film regardless of what it is so that means $XXX already that we can bank on. Maybe Will Smith. We will just change the Holocaust to Rwanda. Who is the writer? Never heard of him. No worries we’ll buy the screenplay sight unseen and then have Hot Writer of the Week rewrite. Did you know the last thing he rewrote brought in $XXX so that’s another chunk we can bank. You want Old Hack to rewrite? Can’t do. You see what This is a Sure Fire Moneymaker did? Box office poison! Can we get Spielberg to executive produce? He won’t do anything, but we get to put his name on the film and that’s another $XXX guaranteed. There’s this young director we have an eye on. He did this slasher film on his IPhone for $100. Grossed $12 mil. He would be perfect for this. It’s a shame we actually have to shoot the damn thing because right now on paper we are about $100 million in the black. Adrian, call our guy at Variety so that this thing makes it into the news tomorrow! Our corporate stock will jump at least 6 points. Tiffany, call my broker now! Sell if it hits 7. If they also finally bring that Infinity Vacuum cleaner to market at the same time the stock will really jump! We will do a two for one split and a 0.7 dividend. Tiffany, hold that call!

Anyway, what were you saying about the story? Something to do with an elephant?

The Lesson

Drama.
2014.
Written by Lauris Gundars, Andris Gauja, Aleksandrs Grebņevs.
Directed by Andris Gauja.
Filmed by Aleksandrs Grebņevs.
Starring: Inga Alsiņa, Mārcis Klatenbergs, Andrejs Smoļakovs, Gatis Gāga, Liena Šmukste, Marina Janaus, Edgars Siliņš, Ieva Apine, Elza Feldmane, Agirs Neminskis.

Andris Gaujas' The Lesson is a feature film which looks and feels like a documentary by design. It was originally meant as a documentary following a high school class through graduation, but fell apart during the filming once the principal of the school decided that the film was revealing too much.
The film tells the story of Zane Sirma (Inga Alsina) who is about to start her first year as a Russian language teacher in a Riga, Latvia's capital, high school. In addition to her duties as an instructor she is also to serve as the mentor for the current graduating class. She has just ended a relationship, her new coworkers seem indifferent to her for the most part, and her students resentful and rebellious. Zane grows close to one student , Inta (Ieva Apine), who is being abused by her father while one of the other students, Max (Marcis Klatenbergs), in the class seems to be developing a crush on Zane herself.
In documentary films we naturally accept that what we see on the screen is that way because that's how it happened. The filmmaker might have control over what he chooses to show us but not over what actually happens. In a narrative film our assumption is that the filmmaker has his hand everywhere and every single thing up on the screen is fraught with meaning. The documentary film approach doesn't really work for the first part of the film. As characters get introduced and the narrative arc established it all feels a little stilted and artificial. Empty spaces and extended silences seem to be just that. Characters seem to act and events unfold simply because someone wrote it that way in the script.

However, despite the documentary approach failing in the early, expository, parts of the film it really pays off towards the end. The narrative has been established, for better or worse, and now the film becomes about emotional truth. As Zane's and Max's relationship develops and races towards the inevitable cliff, the hand held camera shots, the odd angles, the extended silences and empty spaces enhance the tone and mood of the film and its story.
Overall, The Lesson despite it's early failings is a very good film that  truly captures both the tender moments between two persons as they grow closer and closer united against the world and the awkward moments as they start to drift further and further apart after being beaten down by that world at almost every turn.

Rocks in My Pockets

Comedy/Drama.
2014.
Written, directed and voiced by Signe Baumane.

 As someone who has struggled with depression for most of my life I can say first hand there might not be a lot of fun in depression but there is a lot of funny. Perhaps its the predisposition to seeing doom and gloom even when they are not there that allows for the reverse on rare occasions and for most of us those rare occasions can be enough to carry us through the bad times.
Rocks in My Pockets, the first feature-length animated film by New York based Latvian artist Signe Baumane, is a very funny film about depression and mental illness. Baumane uses her life experiences as well as those of her family to draw a world that is both unique and personal and at the same time universal. Tolstoy was only half right when he wrote: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The ways might be different, but the scenery and destinations are all pretty much the same.
Starting with her grandmother the film's narrative arc follows the women in Baumane's family as they make their way through life. Their worlds and circumstances might change but certain patterns start to emerge. First there's grandmother Anna, bright and educated, who starts out as a young woman with seemingly endless possibilities and ends up as a desperate mother of 8 beaten down both by the events of history and personal circumstance who dies at 50. Cause of death undetermined, but whispers of empty bottles of pills and suicide attempts lurk in the shadows. Then there is daughter Miranda, bright and artistic, who sees beauty all around her but sinks into the deep well of despair following her marriage and the birth of her child. Then there is granddaughter Linda, bright and beautiful, who is undone by an obsession with a marriage that doesn't exist anywhere other than in her imagination, and granddaughter Irbe, quiet and musical, who eventually succumbs to the voices that only she can hear, and finally there is granddaughter Signe, the thread that ties it all together, whose search for meaning leads to an obsession with ending it all.

It would have been easy to over-dramatize the above. Especially in an animated film. Baumane's film works so well simply because it's not. The animation and art are simple and almost primitive. Her language is matter of fact and straightforward. Her voice-over at times droll and ironic and at times emphatic and melancholy. The humor emerges naturally from the narrative. She captures both the absurdity and banality of normal life as well as the highs and lows of those abnormal moments and people. Baumane is not a professional actress and gives most of the credit to her voice-over coach and co-producer Sturgis Warner. They rehearsed for 7 weeks, but having seen the film I can't see it working with anyone other than Baumane doing it. Her "unprofessionalism" adds a layer of personal honesty and intimacy that might not have been there with anyone else. It is after all her story and while it might be personal and intimate we can all see parts of ourselves and those around us in it.