The Double Random: 2 Thoughts, 1 Price
Thought 1:
It really bothers me when movies step away from their central premise for no real reason. I was watching Urban Legend earlier while cleaning. The entire modus operandi of the killer in the movie is to kill people based on urban legends (someone in the backseat, pop rocks and coke, etc). But in the midst of the movie (and I guess spoiler warning) Tara Reid gets killed in a very generic non-concept specific way. She’s just stalked, attacked and killed. Unless I’m missing something it’s incredibly glaring in the middle of the movie.
The strength of any film (whatever strength that movie may be said to have) is how well it uses its unique premise. Slasher films by and large aren’t that unique so to just stray from the film’s main premise in the middle of the movie seems so arbitrary and unnecessary and just.. poor.
Thought 2:
George Steinbrenner passed away yesterday. The owner of the Yankees was pure Force in human form and he changed the game in many, many ways and of course, depending on who you ask, it wasn’t always positive.
He was dramatic and he was big and he understood something very important: owning a sports team is owning a business that makes only one product: the Brand. And in sports, you define that Brand by winning.
You can scream about how he threw money at everything, and used his financial means to crush other teams, but that ignores the real picture: He wasn’t the richest owner in the sport, for every dollar he spent, he made more than enough back, and he continued to reinvest that into the Brand, into his product. It’s the mentality that any sports fan would want behind the wheel of the franchise they love, but aren’t all luckily enough to have.
705 Years Later, Dante Would Be Ashamed of the NYT
The standards editor at the New York Times has passed an edict (or banned or as he states editorial guidelines) forbidding the use of “tweet” for non bird or onomatopoeia related usage; in other words, Mr. Phil Corbett has decreed that the NYT will not recognize the word tweet in relation to Twitter.
In his own words:
Some social-media fans may disagree, but outside of ornithological contexts, “tweet” has not yet achieved the status of standard English. And standard English is what we should use in news articles.
Except for special effect, we try to avoid colloquialisms, neologisms and jargon. And “tweet” — as a noun or a verb, referring to messages on Twitter — is all three. Yet it has appeared 18 times in articles in the past month, in a range of sections.
Of course, new technology terms sprout and spread faster than ever. And we don’t want to seem paleolithic. But we favor established usage and ordinary words over the latest jargon or buzzwords.
One test is to ask yourself whether people outside of a target group regularly employ the terms in question. Many people use Twitter, but many don’t; my guess is that few in the latter group routinely refer to “tweets” or “tweeting.” Someday, “tweet” may be as common as “e-mail.” Or another service may elbow Twitter aside next year, and “tweet” may fade into oblivion. (Of course, it doesn’t help that the word itself seems so inherently silly.)
“Tweet” may be acceptable occasionally for special effect. But let’s look for deft, English alternatives: use Twitter, post to or on Twitter, write on Twitter, a Twitter message, a Twitter update. Or, once you’ve established that Twitter is the medium, simply use “say” or “write.”
I have to say I can see the argument and the justification Mr. Corbett is using. You don’t want to be lured into using a new technological term like (made up) “bilzbop” for it to fade away over night. But his weak discussion and hiding behind some ideal “standard” English is troubling. Of course, this new usage for tweet has not yet been recognized by whatever higher power recognizes and labels words as “standard”. That takes time and usage. But not just usage by every day people. No, it requires usage by the “standard” bearers.
And here is my problem. English is a language of the people. It is a living language and it should be treated as such. As words grow in usage and receive different meanings, the language and the people who use the language should not wait on some “standard bearer”.
This style edict is all the more troubling when you realize that it continues to reinforce archaic media walls. Old media versus new media mirrored in the behavior of dead language and living language. I am not, nor would I ever dare, suggest that the Times begin to speak in broken internet short hand. I would ask them to consider a few things though:
- When brevity and page space matter, why use several words for one?
- When clarity matters, why not use the exact term?
- When you are battling for your audience and part of that battle involves the vernacular of your readers, what do you lose by embracing the term from a service that you yourself use?
- And, lastly, if your pride yourself on the motto, “where the conversation begins”, why are you letting others dictate the terms of your conversation? Seven hundred years ago, the poet Dante explained that the vernacular was the more noble language over Latin, because the vernacular was the language of the people. That it was the language that was natural to us. Like babies learning new words, our language grows with us on a yearly basis. And it grows quickly, with reckless abandon.
As it should.
And as your audience falls away to the bloggers and other new media, you have to ask not just who you’re having that conversation with, but how and why you use the words you use. Because really, it might not be a big deal to not use “tweet” or our fictional “bilzbop”, but as we push forth with new ideas and new technology and new devices, waiting around for the standard bearers to say “its okay” isn’t going to be okay when you have no one left to say it too.
The text of Mr. Corbett’s comments came from The Awl.
It’s Because the Suburbs are a Scary, Scary Place
I’ve been watching the Halloween movies lately. Don’t ask why. Sometimes you just get in the mood to watch something out of season. And sometimes that urge leads you to watch movies that aren’t always good. (And while I’ve watched Bad Santa during July, I’ve never made the plunge to watching Tim Allen’s The Santa Clause on Memorial Day weekend).
Anyway, after watching the original and then the Zombie remake (coupled with watching the recent Elm Street reboot), it becomes apparent what doesn’t work about Rob Zombie’s film. These creatures -- Michael, Freddy, Jason -- are very much tied into suburban fears. It’s where they draw their strength from.
Jason represents the thing that goes bump in the night outside of the city. Sure, he’s out at a campsite, but everything and everyone in the movies scream suburban (even when the characters come from the city). Take the “bump in the night” out of the night and put him in the city (aka the dismally bad Jason Takes Manhattan) and his effect is diminished. Is a hockey masked, machete wielding slow moving mass really that scary in an alley way full of rapists and drug dealers?
Similarly, Freddy is the thing inside of our head. No matter where you live, your own imagination can betray you. As a character, he turns on the idea that our dreams give him power. It’s that chill that keeps us awake at night and that we can’t hide from no matter we live. Inner-city crime rate too high? Flee to the nearby small town and feel safe. Safe, that is, until a news report plants a chilling seed in your mind that gnaws at you in the middle of the cold night.
Which leaves Michael Myers. The shape. The boogeyman. The representative of the darkness that lurks within the family unit. Nearly all of the movies boil down to the idea of family (Resurrection is the only one that ignores it after it’s first 15 minutes and the movie is a slow walk down the horrible trail at that point).
But in Rob Zombie’s Halloween, we get nearly forty minutes of back story to explain why a young boy would snap one Halloween and kill his sister. It's supposed to be a look into the developing mind of a sociopath. Except it doesn't work out that way. Just like Jason’s little trip to New York, the character loses its power once we surround it by other horribly mean characters. Is Michael Myers scarier than racist, redneck mental hospital guards who gleefully gang rape a traumatized patient?
If the story puts you in the position to think about something like that, then the story's lost its battle. And if your Big Bad Scary Evil Monster-Man wastes time taking out criminals or vile disgusting human beings, then you’ve weakened the scare. We should be afraid for these relatively innocent (if stupid) people and not feeling pretty blase that a rapist received cinematic just desserts.
Of Plays and Men
I’ve been reading many of the plays of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa over the past few days. He’s a very talented playwright, who’s works are brimming with a strange mix of pop-culture and literary awareness that has been seasoned with sexuality.
What I’ve enjoyed about this journey through Aguirre -Sacasa’s published works is just how unique each play and universe feels. Obviously like all writers, he has common themes he retreats to but each of them has stood as separate individuals.
But what’s really gotten me thinking since I started reading them is wondering how long it will take before the plays could fall into the hands of high school english classes (my guess: never). Obviously the sexuality and language present a block that will most likely remain, but the discussions that could be spawned from some of these plays almost begs to be had (at least in an AP class).
For instance, the play Good Boys and True takes a look at the high pressure exclusivity of a private school and the scandals that a sex tape can bring. Its an interesting look at at a phenomenon all the more common in this post One Night in Paris world and one that speaks to different generations with a relevancy that something like Oedipus Rex does not. (And don’t mistake me there. I love me some Greek incest and eye gouging, but its low on the relatability scale for most people who read it regardless of age.)
On the other end of the scale, though, is a play by Aguirre -Sacasa called Rough Magic. It’s the story of a woman who has found herself with the ability to literally bring life to the characters in plays and has. For instance, The Merchant of Venice’s Shylock now lives in modern day New York as a bookseller. It’s more of an action oriented play with the focus on the struggle between this woman and the real-life Prospero (not Shakespeare’s fictional one), but it works as such a wonderful survey into characters from different works and to the nature of stage storytelling. The furies from the Oresteia working side by side with Caliban works the same way as post-modern TV shows like Robot Chicken. And as a comparison piece to movies, having an action play to discuss works conversational wonders.
I did not enjoy the vast majority of the books I read when I was in high school, but I loved all the plays. It’s not that the books were bad -- I can recognize quality while hating the tale -- but there was always a sense that the value of these books was determined not because of their conversational or exploratory merits, but because of an abstract intrinsic work. And I understand certain materials have to be read. I get that and it’s hard to fight for change.
But, man, reading these plays makes me wish those discussions could be had. New blood could leak into the literary canon. And, yknow, sometimes all it takes is the right taste to get someone hooked for life.
Mr. Kurosawa Would Be 100 Today
Akira Kurosawa would have been 100 years old today had he not passed away in 1998. He created an incredibly legacy of film. Not only did he leave behind some of the most magnificent movies to have ever been made, but he influenced generations of film makers around the world.
In an essay on the criterion collection’s website, Donald Richie says that Kurosawa “was interested only in practice -- how to make films more convincing, more real, more right.” If the theories of other realities are true, then we can hope that maybe Kurosawa achieved his goal in at least one of them. Some of us, though, would say he achieved that goal here. In this one.
Throne of Blood and Rashomon are among some of the greatest movies I’ve ever seen. Brilliant is thrown around too casually today, but those were and are brilliant. They are just as vibrant and engaging now as when they were first put to the screen.
For me, though, the saddest part about celebrating a genius in any artistic medium, is what we are missing out on. If we stop and think would he was able to create with comparatively just the barest essentials, how big of a masterpiece could he have made with a world of technology at his hand?
The Problem With Book Buying
I like media. Love it. All different kinds, all different ways we can tell stories, express ideas and create entertainment, but I’m reading less books now then ever before. And it’s not that I’m not reading. I’m still reading plays, scripts, comics, news stories, in depth articles, and essays.
But books are falling by the way side and that bothers me. It’s not that I’m incapable of reading a good juicy book (I am), but it’s finding them. Of all forms of media we currently have books seem to be the hardest to have a Genius-style “if you liked” genome project. They also take the largest initial commitment to determine whether or not you’ll like them.
Take a moment to think about the amount of investment required in just sampling a book. You can give a song 3 minutes, a comic 15 minutes, a sitcom 22 minutes, an hour long drama 44 minutes or a movie 2 hours. In all those cases you can take in the full work and determine whether or not you liked them. A play may only take a few hours to read (a movie script maybe 70 minutes). But a book. Try reading a book at random off the shelf in a genre you enjoy from an author you’ve never heard of.
How fast do you read? Give yourself 22 minutes or 44 minutes and then decide if you like the book and/or the author. It’s a hard task to do.
And the idea of finding a book off the shelf at random is a massive time consuming ordeal in itself. Unlike any other medium the amount of pre-entrance knowledge for newer books is low. If you’re going to read Harry Potter for the first time you’re fine. With a movie, you can seek out trailers, they are TV commercials and clips. With something like a song or a comic, there’s very little pre-knowledge needed. Video games spend their entire development cycle creating material to get people interested: synopsis, interviews, walkthroughs, pictures, trailers...
And while I’m aware that a book cannot do that (or at least well, most trailers for books tend to be very lame at the best), but that only makes it harder to find a needle in the book stacks. As it stands, the lack of a true genome project for books (and it may be something that can never exist) is a detriment for me. For example, I like the John Sandford Prey novels but really can’t be bothered with almost all other crime/detective fiction (not that I find it bad, just not my cup of tea.) I like the work of Brad Meltzer, but can’t stand John Grisham. I like the fantasy crafted by Neil Gaiman (Coraline, Stardust) and Gregory Maguire (Wicked) but have trouble connecting with similar authors. Short stories can help introduce you to authors (as was my introduction to the genius of Junot Diaz), but even sorting for short stories can be ridiculous.
This puts me in the position where I have to buy blind once I’ve purchased every book from an author I enjoy. And so far I’ve had pretty good success. I’ve discovered the works of Alexandra Robbins (Pledged, The Overachievers) and Alan DeNiro’s bizarre and wonderful Total Oblivion, More or Less. But each time I become more and more reluctant to pick up a new book. The debate takes longer. Eventually luck runs out.
Which makes me feel bad. I’m sure there are many talented authors out there with brilliant books that I’ve yet to experience. But without a system to find them and with such a high cost of barrier to determine like/dislike, it may be a long time before I do find them.
Trying Out Mac Journal
I know I’ve neglected the blog a bit.
Progress still being made on the short film, but weather is a harsh mistress sometimes.
I’m trying out Mac Journal right now. One of the reason’s I seem to be unable to get into the blogging spirit is actually having to open up the web interface. It’s ugly and unintuitive to me (and that’s not the fault of wordpress. I like wordpress!).
Anyway, we’re going to see if this doesn’t motivate more updates.
Unemployed Overlord: Behind the Scenes 2
So here's a few pictures from our nearly full costume test. We're still getting a belt, looking at footwear. Our concern was to make sure that everything fit the way it was supposed to so we could permanently assemble and strap things on.
Plus, ya gotta know what the costume looks like before you accessorize!
And here is Machiavelli the cat, caught a little off guard: (The truth is he looks like that ANY TIME his paws are not on the ground. It's kind of funny.)
Unemployed Overlord: Behind the Scenes 1
This weekend saw a lot of pre-production work on my upcoming short film UNEMPLOYED OVERLORD.
Hopefully we'll be able to get the costuming wrapped up in the next day or two, but in the meantime here's a sneak peak picture:
And how about a logo:
Adjusting to Internet Communication
It's interesting watching people -- both new and old -- find their voices when communicating via the internet. I don't necessarily mean blogs or news stories. I mean through Facebook and twitter and message boards.
When people first start using these communication tools (or even e-mail and IMs) they tend to write as stiff as possible. A conversational tone is lost, replaced by very focused and direct communication. Many times personality itself is even suppressed. Now of course this isn't true of everyone, as some do adapt immediately.
What I find interesting though is how similar it is to watching people actually learn to talk. You start with strict structure and phrasing and then overtime give in to slang and memes and acronyms. You relax as you absorb the techniques of those around you, take what you want, filter out what you don't and combine with your own personality.
People speak with their own cadence in real life and it's something they've developed over time. Christopher Walken didn't talk like Christopher Walken at birth. He became Christopher Walken.
And now thanks to the somewhat voyeuristic nature of the internet, we can all watch each other find our own verbal voices in print form.
It's kind of cool.