Revisiting Donnie Darko

The first time I saw Donnie Darko was when it first came out on VHS. A couple of DVD's were around at that time but the technology was just emerging and certainly too expensive for my family to invest in at that point, which was fine with me as I am generally not well receptive to change. I had no idea what the movie was at the time other than that I had seen a preview for it on some other VHS I had recently rented and thought it looked alright. That of course was the sweet summer between grade 10 and 11 when I would watch anything that had a cool enough video box regardless of whether it was released theatrically or straight-to-video. I had already gotten into writing reviews at this time and had made the decision that one day I would be a professional critic (I think my original review still exists on IMDB somewhere, spelling mistakes and all). What played before me, at the time, I considered an act of absolute brilliance. Of course, back then, when you're young and think you know something about something, Donnie Darko was just the thing I needed. Here I was, 16 or somewhere there around, working the film out over and over in my head, connecting the dots, making huge, brilliant discoveries about life and love and fear and death. I thought I had seen a masterpiece. Soon after I got a DVD player and slowly started collecting them. Donnie Darko was one of my first purchases. I intended to watch it over and over and over again in my lifetime. I just watched Donnie Darko for the second time tonight, Saturday February 27, 2010. I watched it because I want to sell off some DVDs and thought it might be one of them. Over the span on those years I've grown. I now hold a major in Film Studies, I've had reviews published and presented at a prestigious film conference, I've even gotten an e mail from Roger Ebert complimenting my writing, and, most importantly, I've watched some of the greatest films ever made. Needless to say I don't feel the same about Donnie Darko. One of us apparently hasn't aged well. I can admire the craft of it's making, the professionalism of it's performances, but now I've learned that ideas are not what makes a film great or not, it's how it goes about presenting them (Roger Ebert once said, "It's not what a film is about that makes it good or not. It's how it's about it."), and an over-emphasis on film style doesn't impress me nearly as much as it once did. In reality, Donnie Darko is one of those stepping stone pictures. Like Fight Club, The Boondock Saints or The Usual Suspects, to name a few, young people discover them and latch on to them because they are like nothing they have ever seen before. Every independent thinking, individualistic teenager wants to have something that they can hold above everyone else; something that speaks to them in volumes that their brainless colleagues could never comprehend, until they grow up, see more movies (better movies), and finally realize that those films are no more than empty-headed and empty-hearted excursions into style, with shallow philosophies that serve only themselves, not the stories. That was Donnie Darko to me. I'm glad I got out of that stage. Some people never do. I think Kevin Smith said it best on one of his Evening With... DVDs when he made the comment that not even writer/director Richard Kelly knows what Donnie Darko is about. The comment was in jest but that basically sums it up. Kelly has no overarching approach to this material. He has no one specific thing he is trying to say, so he says them all and hopes maybe one or two stick. I know, I know there's all this contradictory imagery that shows the duality of the human psyche, and I get that, but so what? Does that automatically make the movie good? What does it have to do with time travel? By the time the movie rolls around into it's third act and starts looping back upon time and upon itself and we are treated to a conclusion that is more ironic than anything, you finally see what Kelly's point was: to try to hold this thing together for just under 2 hours. That he does it is commendable. But it still doesn't make the movie a success. To put imagery in a movie and assume it speaks for itself isn't enough. The golden rule of style is that form must equal function. You cannot separate the story from the style. As Godard once said, they create each other. That's the mistake Donnie Darko makes: it doesn't provide an adequate story to back up it's symbolism. I can see why a lot of kids would connect with Donnie Darko. He's a depressed, dissatisfied youth, wandering through life just trying to find something meaningful. I obviously connected with that once upon a time myself. Now though, his journey just seems in vein because Kelly doesn't allow him to find that meaning. At the end, Darko isn't a kid on the verge of grand epiphany, he's just some character in some minor, hip indie flick that goes through the motions of being some character in some minor, hip indie flick. And that's about it really.

Valentine's Day

Jean-Luc Godard once said that the best way to criticise a film is to make another one. Consider Valentine’s Day anti-criticism. If Love Actually was like a greatest hits collection of all the warmest, funniest, wittiest, most tender moments in romantic comedy than Valentine’s Day is the collection of the boring radio singles you can’t endure anymore that seem to already be on every other album you own. It’s the pathetic record label cash grab: there’s nothing new; there’s nothing inspired; and there’s no other reason to buy it unless the thought of throwing money away to hear the same old songs for the hundred and one millionth time is compelling to you. Valentine’s Day is thus a bloated collection of big stars enacting cheesy scenes from bad movies you’ve already seen countless times over. They’re the same songs, all in one convenient place, in a different order. When you think about it in those terms, that basically sums up the aesthetic ark of director Gary Marshall’s career: to disguise mediocre fluff as grand entertainment with the help of big stars. Valentine’s Day takes place over the course of a 24 hour period on February 14, and features not a single scene without, if not a big star, than a recognizable face. Some of them fall in love, some out, some with other people than they should, and some with other people that they shouldn’t; and the wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round. Most of them, the adults anyway, will end up making a pit stop at an I Hate Valentine’s Day party before racing off into the arms of true love after all. That’s the difference between Britain’s romantic comedy and America’s: the British approach romance with a polite detachment, as if they must remember to bow to love before letting it in for dinner. American films are more bitter, cynical and shallow; as if love is something to be dealt with before a grand revelation that leads straight to the cheesy, improbable happy endings. Maybe I should describe the actors. Florist Ashton Kutcher (surprisingly likable) proposes to his girlfriend Jessica Alba, using a line dear ol’ dad taught him (“If you find a girl who seems too good for you, propose.”). He’s best friends with elementary school teacher Jennifer Garner who is with doctor boyfriend Patrick Dempsey, who may still have a wife in San Francisco. Kutcher and Garner have the sweetest relationship as the two dolts who everyone else but they realizes are meant for each other. Working for Kutcher is George Lopez, doing his obligatory gee-wiz I’m an immigrant shtick. Then there’s Topher Grace going out with Anne Hatheway who, in the most unfortunate instance of a great actress forced to do embarrassing things, moonlights as a phone sex girl while also holding a job as a secretary for Queen Latifa. Julia Roberts is on a plane with Bradley Cooper. Emma Roberts plans to lose her virginity in a sequence not nearly as awkward and sweet as the same kind of one she played in the underrated Lymelife, while her shallow, moronic friend Taylor Swift, shows off her muscle-bound boyfriend Taylor Lautner, whose talent seems to evaporate in the presence of a shirt. Jamie Fox is a newsman, Jessica Biel is an agent, and Shirley MacLaine is a wife with a secret. The stories are so many and cut in such a way that there is hardly enough time to grow to care about a single one of them. Dempsey, for example, disappears for so long that by the time he swings around for a second appearance it feels like we’re already on to next week’s episode and need a refresher. Because the film is too busy to create a full story for the viewer to actually care about, what it ultimately offers is a mere reminder of all the much better films, romantic or otherwise, that all of these actors have starred in before. Garner in Juno, Kutcher in The Guardian, Latifa in Last Holiday, Cooper in The Hangover, Grace in Mona Lisa Smile, MacLaine in Terms of Endearment, Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married, Roberts in Notting Hill, Biel and Alba in…nothing particularily memorable. I guess their careers have jumped the shark. That’s a term that refers to the moment when you know something will, forever after, be downhill from there. It’s named after an episode of Happy Days, a show that Gary Marshall created. Go figure. Several weeks ago I happened to watch Taylor Hackford’s An Officer and a Gentleman, a great romantic melodrama with Richard Gere and Debra Winger. It was a great film that cast big stars as strong characters that are forced to encounter serious obstacles on their way to finding love and deciding whether or not they were worth overcoming in the long run. They were real people with real problems. Conversely, Valentine’s Day is a film that typecasts big stars into movie-type roles as people who deal with relationships that feel as though they were dreamed up in the office of some under ambitious screenwriter who needed a convenient way to connect her long, boring, uninspired story together. Unlike An Officer and a Gentle, who’s melodrama feels not like a film but an event, this one feels like someone has pushed autopilot, just on a grander scale.

The Celebrity Connection: Eliza Dushku

I've done this twice now, where I've found photographic evidence that leads me to believe that certain celebrities are just other celebrities in disguise. So I've decided to give this a name. I'm calling it the Celebrity Connection, as you may have been able to decipher from the title of this post. I feel that it is my duty to unmask the truth behind the identities of all celebrities, one by one, especially on days when there is nothing better to write about. This brings me to the matter at hand. Eliza Dushku (Bring it On, Wrong Turn,) has another movie that no one will care about going direct-to-DVD. She should team up with Mischa Barton for her next movie. There's no point after all, of deriving two movies their chances of theatrical distribution. The movie is called Open Graves and IMDB tells me that it is about a bunch of surfers who discover a game that kills someone every time it is played. That kind of sounds halfway like the plot of Richard Kelly's The Box except, ya know, stupider. So anyway, I see a picture of Dushku from the movie and it hit me:

Alice in Wonderland Controversy Still Going Strong

I think this whole story revolving around Tim Burton's Alice and Wonderland being given a truncated theatrical release in order to get it onto DVD quicker is fascinating, which means I'll post about it every time there is some new revelation which thickens the plot. Consider the plot thickened. Hollywood Reporter is saying today that Odeon in the U.K., who are responsible for over 100 theaters, have boycotted Alice in Wonderland and will not be playing it in the U.K., Ireland and Italy (it will however play in Spain, Germany, Austria and Portugal, where it is scheduled for the regular 18 week run). The reason for the boycott is because Odeon is saying that it has put considerable time and money into upgrading its facilities to accommodate 3D films and will therefore give precedence to those that plan on staying for a full run, probably because it is assumed that they will generate more revenue for the theaters. Poor Alice in Wonderland. Even if the movie is no good, here it is sandwiched between it's distributor who is basically saying "It will make more money on home video so let's get it there as quick as possible," and the exhibitor saying, "We don't need it, we have more important films to show." All this because it was chosen to be the guinea pig in a strange and, what is looking to be, unsuccessful experiment. Personally, I say good for the theaters. As someone who values the theatrical experience above all else, the idea that studios want to get movies through the exhibition process and straight into consumer hands as fast as possible is disturbing. Back when DVD sales started rising and box office receipts started dwindling, some pundits started saying that exhibition had simply become a preview for the DVD. Disney is bringing this statement one step closer to reality with this move. I remember the controversy over Steven Soderberg's Bubble some years back which was released to theater, DVD and on-demand all within the span on several weeks. Theaters cried it would be the death of them and they may have been on to something had Bubble not been a small film that applied only to a specific niche market. However, Alice in Wonderland is supposed to be a big tentpole picture. It has a big name director, big stars, and comes from a classic story. To think that a movie like this will find more business on DVD than in theaters implies a sad fate for exhibition. Instead of cutting the theatrical run, why doesn't Disney roll out Alice in the classic mode: open it in select cities, see what the reaction is and then decide how long to play it for? Or else, let it play in 3D for the full 18 weeks while taking it off regular screens after 12 and prepping the DVD? That way it can still play, theaters aren't sore about spending money to play 3D movies for shortened periods and the DVD can be in people's hands in a shorter time, while in the meantime those who still want to see it in 3D can. The reaction from Odeon though also brings to light another fear I've had in recent years: there's just too many movies being made. George Lucas once said that multiplexes were great ideas because it would offer people the opportunity to see smaller films in big theaters alongside the big event pictures. Although I appreciate his optimism, and in some cases he has been right, in most cases the opposite has happened. Studios are scrambling to make more movies to ensure that every screen is filled with their product. Instead of one or two quality products from each studio, we now get mass amounts of prepackaged garbage every week. prepackaged garbage has always been part of the movie going reality, but there's more of it now than ever as studios try to make as much money with as many films in as short a time as possible. That a theater feels it doesn't need a big film like Alice in Wonderland in order to do good business means that studios, by mass producing movies, are, year after year, lowering the value of their own product, even the blockbusters. This is unfortunate because it means that it's now easier than ever for good films to get lost in the shuffle. That seemed to have happened to Werner Herzog's Bad Lieutenant film with Nicholas Cage, which garnered excellent reviews but did next to no business. That's just one example. So I'm glad to hear that theaters are taking a stand and telling the studios that if they don't want to play ball, they'll play with someone else. What is unfortunate is that all of this comes at the expense of a film that might be good or bad, I don't know, but deserves just as fair a shot at success as any other. Could Alice in Wonderland fall victim to all this silly deal making? It'll be interesting to see whether studios or exhibitors will be making the next move. To read my other posts on this matter click here and here.

Costumes Do Not Equal Acting

I was watching Steven Spielberg's Hook in which Dustin Hoffman plays Captain Hook under the guise of excessive make-up: ironically the performance predates Jack Sparrow by about 12 years. Although I was not surprised to discover just how bad Hook was (it's considered minor Spielberg and justifiably so), I was surprised by how bad Hoffman was. Then I got to thinking: it seems that stars gravitate towards these costumed roles in an effort to cut lose, do something wild, have fun, and escape themselves by having their persona's devoured by their costumes. Johnny Depp is so solemn and strange in real life that it's no wonder he tends to work with fimmakers like Tim Burton and Terry Gilliam. They let him cut lose and play by his own rules. But costumes rarely ever equal acting and sometimes stars seem to forget that. There's a thin line between imitation and performance when it comes to actors being cloaked in disguises to the point where they cease to be recognizable. A costume also invites an actor to be lazy. In the case of Hoffman, who is a great actor no doubt and managed to create a brilliant character under a disguise in Tootsie, he spends too much time acting with his fake teeth and his hook, making sure we see how horrible they are at all times, showing how vile a villain he is. However, outside of the hook and the teeth, which always seem to be playing against Hoffman within the frame, there isn't much of a character there and Hoffman approaches playing him like a high school drama student playing dress-up. The whole performance announces itself as performance: "Look at me," Hoffman seems to be saying, "I'm acting." Depp did the same thing as Willy Wonka in Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. One actress who comes to mind who knows how to act with of make-up, not under it, is Emma Thompson. Look her in Nanny McPhee, not a great movie to be sure, but Thompson does exactly what it takes to bring a costume to life: she builds the character from the ground up. The make-up can speak for itself; it's Thompson who let's us know just what Nanny McPhee as a character is really about. The examples go on and on of great character actors who seem to be perfect for zany roles (usually as villains) who are overcome by their costumes. Look at Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton's Batman (there seems to be a pattern developing here, no?). The Joker is one of the most iconic villains in all of comic book history, but Nicholson does virtually nothing with the character except smirk his way to a huge paycheck. Even when Nicholson is all dolled up in the infamous face paint, he can't escape himself as a persona and the character falls to the wayside. Heath Ledger on the other hand completely disappears inside the same character in The Dark Knight and in doing so, provides one of the most memorable villains in all of film history. Ledger, like Thompson, builds the character from the inside out. We aren't seeing Heath Ledger acting evil, we are seeing the Joker brought to life outswide the pages of a comic book. Not only is Ledger deviously entertaining, he also manages to embody the character's ideas and philosophies. That's the sign of an actor giving a character everything they've got. On the other hand, when watching Hoffman in Hook or Depp in Charlie or Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever, or any other innumerable instances of this happening, the joy of acting is sucked out of the performances as we are made physically award of an actor playing dress-up. There's no joy in that. Acting is the art of assessing a character and providing them with exactly what they need. It's about making choices and committing to them to the fullest extent. Performances like the ones mentioned don't make choices, they don't get to know the characters, they don't strive for anything but second rate imitation. That's unfortunate as there are few things more disheartening than seeing a great actor phoning it in in a role that, on paper, they seem destined to play.

The John Hughes Tribute

Deadline Hollywood got a scoop today that there is a separate John Hughes tribute being planned for this year's Oscars apart from the usual name and picture as part of a collage thing that the Oscars usually do. This is all fine and dandy and touching and all that stuff because, as I wrote last week when I posted about Hughes, his films had an enormous impact and his death came suddenly and without warning. However, despite his impact, I'm not so sure Hughes was good enough a filmmaker to deserve his own separate tribute, especially when Robert Altman, Heath Ledger or Eric Rohmer, just to use random examples, only got the in memoriam treatment come Oscar time. I understand that some of the Oscar writers and producers and both hosts Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin worked with Hughes before, but I don't know. This whole thing reeks of desperation: finding any means necessary to up Oscar ratings. It also sets a strange precedent for the future of Oscar telecasts by opening up the question: at what point is someone special enough to deserve their own separate tribute after death and just who decides who meets the criteria?

Shorter Theatrical Runs at Warners Too

A couple days ago I posted about how Disney is trying out some experimental ways in which to release their films, the first of which will be to truncate the theatrical run of Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland, which would mean taking the movie out of theaters roughly a month early in order to get it onto DVD and ondemand even faster. The question that plagued my mind about this is whether or not such a maneuver signals the beginning of the end for seeing movies theatrically, or just a nice roundabout way of saying that Alice in Wonderland is no good? Now Hollywood Reporter is saying that Warner Bros. is also going to adopt the shortened theatrical run method too. Here's the scoop: Warner's is planning on doing the same thing to their fall movie Guardians of Ga'hoole (Zac Snyder's new animated film). The plan is to chop about a month off the initial run in order to have the product prepped for DVD and Blu-ray for Christmas. Similarly Disney is saying the reason for shortening Alice's run is so that it can be out on home video for summer. What's also been revealed is that that studios have assured exhibitors that they will sweeten the deal by offering concessions on movies with shortened runs. The studios have also promised that it will only do this to two movies a year: one in the spring and one in the fall. Of course, the exhibitors need to agree to take these movies out of theaters a month earlier than usual but really, what choice do they have? If they don't play ball with the studios, the studios won't schedule big movies for May and September, ultimately hurting theaters more than to just let the movies go early. Something about these developments fascinates me. What does it imply about the future of exhibition; the future of distribution; the future of home video; the future of the film industry in general? Will two movies a year do anything to help out stuggling studios, especially when they are movies that will probably make big money no matter how fast they get to DVD? I guess all we can do is wait and see whether or not all the majors will adopt this system or whether or not it will reveal itself as a failed transgression and be quickly forgotten.