Atlas Shrugged

Finishing feels like a lifetime accomplishment.

It is long, sure. I felt guilty reading Vanity Fair or Tina Fey's memoir when over 1000 pages of train schedules remained.

Atlas and its authoress are known for the in-no-way subtle philosophies of objectivism and capitalism. I have studied the Bolshevik revolution and chain of events that followed. I have lived in a post-soviet country with a woman born in 1916. I have never liked Communism, as a theory or practice, but now that ambient dislike is direct as a switchblade.

Out of the 1168 pages of development, probably half of it is preaching in favor of the gold standard, and preaching against collectivism. Every speech a favorable character makes (all of whom are fit and good looking) expands from character-voice to preacher-voice in less than 3 words and trails on repetitively for a minimum of 6 paragraphs, maximum (not kidding) 68 pages.

The “novel,” fictional part of Atlas follows the lives of a couple free-trade, super industrialists (think cartoons of Jay Gould, Andrew Carnegie), who are being thwarted and brought low by sniveling “looters” (think cartoons of Lenin and Trotsky).

Like any good Russian writer, Rand is ardent for detail. Though we are repeatedly told these great men and woman are austere and have no patience for decadence, they are quite verbose and prone to wearing the most expensive possible clothing—all of which is described with a maniacal attention to every feather, button, brooch, wisp of hair, cut of pant, and tightness. But it doesn't stop at the clothes, or even the stretches of railroad operation, it bleeds into the similie. Instead of saying things in the same simple tone she affords physical objects, she likes to think humans are more complex, and affords them expression through what she clearly thinks is artistic.

She even often starts in a way that would allow the reader to come to their own, deeper rooted understanding of the situation. Like when “Clouds had wrapped the sky and had descended as fog to wrap the streets below,” it's clear that the desolation is at hand, but Rand must go the next step. She must hammer the idea into you with “as if the sky were engulfing the city.”

Just in case you didn't get it.

Sometimes they are complexly worded: “His voice had the single-toned flatness and the luminous simplicity of an accountant who reminds a reckless purchaser that cost is an absolute which cannot be escaped.” But they are always blunt and unrevealing.

All of which is not to say the book is not good. I enjoyed it. Her characters, in quick dialogue, are well developed individuals. They are funny, and fun-loving. They have complex histories and relationships. Rand uses them to adequately show what she is telling.

And, golly, what she is telling. Her observations of the Bolshevik revolution are acute, vast, and painstakingly detailed. Rand shows just how horrid communism is by walking the reader through exactly what happened to policy in Russia when the Tsars and White Russians were ousted, and alludes this to be the subtler, slimier side of American liberals, and if they are not careful, what could happen if you nationalize industry.

The admirable thing about the set up, is how thoroughly she trounces her opponent argument at the same time as building up her own. She is a true litigator. She lets the opposition spout their philosophies too! Their philosophy for life is peace through control and only ever action “for the good of the people.” She never slips and allows her characters to admit committing these actions were for personal power gain, as the good guys do.

The point, at the end of the day, is to let people be on their own. She simplifies industry to all the good points. She simplifies all unionization and welfare to all their bad points, and sticks her thoughts in the mouths of well-rounded characters. Atlas Shrugged is neither story nor treatise. It is both, but neither fully. It is interesting, but not compelling.

But, it's been voted Reader's Choice for best book HERE, so, maybe I'm just a harsh little looter.

The Nightmare Before Christmas

Love em or hate em, morals in media make recipients feel good about what they just imbibed. Tim Burton, like George Lucas and the Grimm brothers before him, knows this well enough to build one of the greatest cult followings of the generation.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is the story of Jack Skellington, the ruler of Halloween Town, and his mid-life crisis. He starts his quest for self fulfillment feeling misunderstoond and desperately needing the yin to his skeleton yang. Two things that appear in the plot to fill this void. Sally, a patchwork doll who pines after Jack in the shadows of her mad-scientist creator, and Christmastown, the place he finds and recognizes as his cuddly antithesis.

Having found this wonderful thing, this thing Jack knows will complete him.

The quest engulfs not only all of Halloweentown, where all the goblins and vampires must suddenly make Christmas toys and trees instead of scary what-have-yous, but the real world of humans as well.

Sally sees this and points out:

Sally: You don't look like yourself at all

But, our confused hero doesn't see the danger in this. Instead he chirps:

Jack: I know, isn't it wonderful?

Christmas goes horribly and Jack gets bombed out of the sky.

Suddenly, the musical turns from fun romp to kunstleroman. Jack sings to himself, and his ghost hound, about trying new things. This time the experiment ended horror-fully, and isn't that ironic since, well, he is the king of horror?

The nightmare is over. Jack emerges from his experience knowing exactly who he is, what his part in the human world is, and how he must now carry on.

Moral: Be yourself.

Though this moral is stridently sung at teens through High School Musical and other Disney sorts of things, they all hinge on one aesthetic: Prettiness.

What makes Nightmare a behemoth in the world is its unique aesthetic. It's dark and gritty like early Alan Moore comics. Its viewers attach to the aesthetic first and are then hypnotized by sympathy for both Jack and Sally, and finally fulfilled by the moral.

It does not dissapoint.

Informed Rant: How to Adapt a Film from Written Fiction

Subtitle: Lisbeth Salander Can Kick your Ass in Two Languages and Two Media

Book read. Swedish film watched. Trailer for Fincher version due out this Christmas now watched three times.

I cannot think of a better example than The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo to display what I talk about when I talk about film adaptation. Films adapt movies in one of three ways. Off the bat, the third way is the Perfect Way, which is to be perfect. Closest I've seen to this so far is Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice, or Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides. It both lifts dialogue from the book and gives it perfect artistic expression to capture the dozen or so nuances the author weaves into 100 + pages that most film just forgets.

The first way is the Reactionary Way. This is what directors and screenplay adapters do in order to not upset the (usually rabid) fan base of the book. They take the plot line literally and plunk it into film, slap some blocking and production values on that baby and let 'er ride. Usually tons of detail is lost and the audience leaves shaking their heads in self righteous disappointment saying “the book was so much better.”

Most recent example of this was Water for Elephants which I downloaded as I read it. Easy, absorbing read without much deeper meaning about humanity than aging sucks and love rocks. No matter. The backdrop is scrupulously detailed with obscure facts about depression era traveling circuses, elephant health care, and gorgeous circus act play by plays. The film almost captures this stuff, washing up in the trough as the sumptuous doppleganger of Freaks the actual film made by and for depression era traveling circuses.

The movie nails the red velvet production values, and crams every last plot twist in the book into an hour and a half. It even has a perfect cast. I literally cannot think of better people to play these roles. Yet, it fails. It is ok. It does not grip or prod or beg to be followed at all like the book does. I self righteously shake my head. It is a reactionary film to the given novel.

The second way of adapting films from text is the Gut Reaction Way. Exhibits include the 1940s version of Wuthering Heights and the grossly underrated Secretary where it goes very well, and Starship Troopers where it goes very, very badly. These take brilliant characters, in and re-imagine them in filmic structures. These directors know what they want to see, and, well, to hell with the reading public's opinion of the original text.

In Secretary, the general plot line is preserved, but most of Lee's motivation is skewed. The relationship is explored far more deeply in the film than ever was in Lorrie Moore's short story, and is eventually seen as functional and unique instead of stunted and anonymous. The result is a touching true love story showing development of characters once lost as sadist and masochist in a blissfully sado-masochistic compromise. Oh, and it looks like the budget was big as Water for Elephants' was, but in fact is more along the lines of The Blair Witch Project.

I don't even want to talk about Starship Troopers, and no amount of arguing about the difficulty to achieve good and serious sci-fi. It was ugly and destroyed poignant relationships and challenging concepts of warfare. Plus, Denise Richards just causes movies to ash.

Which is to say, overall that writers of fiction and writer/directors of film have two obligations for mainstream consumption (p.s. Fuck avant garde fiction and film. What a waste of time): Plot and Emotionalism.

If an adaptation nails just one of these, it fails in delivering it's reason for being. No, Francis Lawrence, $38 million spent on lighting and set design and exotic animals will not evoke a fever of pure love, hate and fear like thinking before directing Cristoph Waltz as a paranoid schizophrenic circus ring leader. IE. Learn to let some scenes take longer than two minutes, and let your oscar winning German off his three lines per scene leash while devoting (I swear) 50% of your screen time to close ups of your Edward Cullen prize.

I am angry at that film for being such a disappointment.

Which is exactly what I do not expect to happen December 23^rd with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The book is an action-packed thrill of bad people doing bad things and getting their sweet sweet comeuppance. The Swedish film was great for several reasons.

1. it was Swedish.

2. It was Swedish.

3. The girl was perfectly cast.

4. It followed the book quite well.

It lacked for several reasons.

1. That poor Swedish actor just does not have the sex appeal Larsson describes for Blomkvist

2. pacing. The book, granted spends a lot of time following Blomkvist around as he reads things and stares for hours at photographs while drinking coffee, but the spirit of the book—no matter how many pages are spent describing this or that detail in a forty year old photo, is snappier than snap bracelets and thrice as deadly.

I have no qualms about Hollywood doing its own version. They even look to have obeyed the idea of a leading lady who does not look like Megan Fox, who I was worried they really would cast. Rooney Mara is neither pretty nor made up. What I liked about Noomi Rapace, who played Lisbeth in the Swedish version, is how technically she is not gorgeous, but she exudes the confidence from a hard core that characterizes Lisbeth and is magnetic. She never actually looks angry or riled up, exactly as Lisbeth is described. Mara, on the other hand projects a tight-coiled anger and glares at the camera in the poster...

Because the plot of this first installment of the Millenium trilogy focuses more on Blomkvist's actions than Lisbeths, it is nice to see a disproportionately large number of shots of Daniel Craig to those of Mara in the trailer. Even so, Mara may, and this may be one of the few times I ever say this, emote too much. I worry about central casting, then, even if it's marginal and overall an impressive choice.

So, not only was it inevitable with a sale that high, but Hollywood also has the chops to demand someone like Daniel Craig play Blomkvist, and has the good damn sense to force the pacing to reflect the reading experience.

If the trailer is anything to go off, it will not disappoint. It's unusual to say the least. It is also an extreme and innovative way of putting together a trailer. The trailer for the Swedish Gil was synonymous with any action movie-some quick shots and some plot told, there's even a cheesy voice-over making sure you know what's going on. The advantage of selling 30 million copies of a book in 41 languages and more digital copies than all of Nora Roberts' books combined, is that a film maker can safely assume their audience knows the plot, and thus dispense with the pleasantries when galvanizing your audience into spending $9 on a theatre ticket when that nine bucks could be spent buying a stocking stuffer. (NB. Does the juxtaposition of abusing women and Christmas disturb anyone else?) That is, in a minute and a half long trailer, you see, there are in excess of 180 shots. That is how many distinct cuts there are in 30 minutes of film, usually. These film makers are not fucking around with their fucked up material.

The trailer tag line is: The feel bad movie of Christmas. Catchy.

It makes me wonder on tangents about where and when our society got so gritty in it's entertainment. Cartoonishly so, almost, except it takes itself very seriously. The result is not the feel good revenge of Kill Bill, but the intense disgust and sadness of Schindler's List combined with the crunchy blood lust of clean Jason Borne movies. It's a sexy-as-hell, hero worshiping version of Monster or North Country.

That is what the book felt like, it's what the trailer looks ready to deliver, without dropping a single crucial detail: flowers to motor bike to blocking and tattoos. I am ready to rank this movie in a Top 5 adaptations, and I've only seen 1.5 minutes of it.

Oh, did I mention the trailer also features the best possible cover of a Zeppelin classic? Yea. It does. Who is that band, and what torrent do I have to get on?

Changeling

Clint Eastwood, 2008

Going into a film 95% blind is difficult to accomplish. Thanks to the media frenzied world we call home, contemporary films coming out a dozen a day announce themselves months in advance. When we sit and watch one we know who is in it, who made it, and something about the plot. If we’ve seen more than 20 films in the past we can probably tell you several more things about the plot.

I missed Changeling. I knew it had Angelina Jolie, and that it was one of her bleeding heart movies. Although it was exactly that, it had an unusual dose of righteous triumph that tasted good at times.

Otherwise, pacing was inexorably slow, and not in a bad way. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, in a time of movies paced like meteor showers and Ritalin test labs, long pans and tingles of piano music ramp up tension.

The plot itself doesn’t give itself away, almost ever. Hard to do when you hear the premise: Woman has child kidnapped and the returned child is not her own. Right, then you think, well, she’ll fight it and get him back. Cut and dry. However, Eastwood makes us rethink how things happened with police and women’s rights in 1928, and suddenly the story is twice as interesting. The interest factor adds to the tension, and the sympathy for the various characters.

Jolie, for her part, does not sex up the character at all and thanks to a reduction bra and some genuine acting, the role of Christine Collins is magnetic unlike any other character she has played. You literally want to hug this woman and punch some guys in the face on her behalf. It’s a new feeling. It magnifies the emotion you have already put into the show. It’s a surprise.

Such a surprise is bought at a high price. Christine is so sympathetic because she is put in so brutal and hopeless a situation. The situation, dealing with police, serial killers of children, kidnappings from well-to-do neighborhoods, mental institutes and radio priests, is smothers like LA smog. It is not fun to watch. It is perfect, in that it is complete. It is beautiful in that it elicits such strong reactions from the viewers, but I doubt I could ever watch Changeling again.

Strangers on a Train

no. 5 on the list of Kiddo Watching Hitchcock

Hitchcock 1951

Oo! Screenplay by Raymond Chandler, this can't go wrong. Yet, it turns out the plot is unlike Chandler novels. hm.

The strangers are identified by choice in cab, luggage, shoes, and the music accompanying them through the term. No faces—the camera follows only their feet as they exit their taxis and enter the train station. So effective. They are strangers even to the audience so far. Even so, it seems like a simple set-piece idea. The biggest set piece of the film is at the very end, an allegorical trampling of men with carousel horse hoofs, which is very fun, but by no means plausible. In fact it's the most ridiculous thing I've seen Hitchcock try to pull off. The set pieces don’t end there. What seems worst about Strangers on a Train, is the Hammer Horror sort of reliance on set pieces strung together with suspense.

The best of them is the map and flashlight at minute 63. The map is only on A4 size paper, and the flash light isn't too large, but only an inch-wide circle illuminates any part of the map at any time while our hero blunders around in the middle of the night in the murderer’s mansion. Pretty adorable way of making the audience feel claustrophobic and, therefore, building tension, similar to how Beowulf never shows you the monster, and The Blair Witch Project only uses a hand held camera.

Though, here, it is just another way in which Hitchcock stolidly refuses to create tension through melodramatic music (see anything by JJ Abrams) or killing off of random people (see anything from Gene Roddenberry). It is truly, as many before me have noticed, visionary and inherently superior movie making

But, double layering tension from the tennis match with reaching for a lighter just isn't enough to create the same intensity seen in other Hitchcock movies. And certainly doesn't live up to the artificial claustrophobia of the map/flashlight.

Longer reaching tension is found in the setting up of evidence for and against each stranger and their murder. The lighter, the glasses, acknowledging that Haines is playing a different style of tennis than ever before. Various people witnessing various things. Anthony getting off the ride, skeptically observed by someone on the dock. Someone asking the Anthony for a light on the train, and Anthony's big show of using matches instead of the lighter. Presumably, these could all be gathered in the same way that Caller of Delaware Tech, another stranger met on another train, was gathered in the initial questioning of Haines' alibi. This time, though, to build up against the real killer. Phew, justice is a-comin!

No amount of intriguing set pieces and chance encounters with nut balls, though can hide a mediocre presentation. Strangers, though, has all no bodies and not a really good one between them. All the lines are carried out with such flat ceremony it seems they had only just memorized the things to say without thinking of actually how to deliver them. There's not a single memorable facial expression, gesture or intonation at all. I felt like I was watching the first run through blocking. In his other films, H uses either big stars (Jimmy Stewart, Grace Kelly, Carey Grant, Ingrid Bergman) or brilliant no names (Anthony Perkins).

What's up here? It's not like H hadn't been making movies with actors for 30 years already. Notorious was a couple before this one, and Notorious was excellent. Not just thanks to Grant and Bergman.

Not as strong as any of the others I've seen so far, but not a bad film. I guess starting with Rear Window is just silly, it's all downhill from there.

Girl with a Pearl Earring

Peter Webber, 2003

The perfect cure for Bridget Jones: Pushing Me to the Edge of Reason. Also, Colin Firth, but sexier.

How I have not written a review for this movie yet is baffling. I've watched in the range of Casablanca and American Beauty, and it actually hits on more things I hold dear in film and life. Girl verges on the religious for me, and not because one of the main themes is the difference in lifestyle between Catholics and Protestants.

Like Vermeer's paintings, Girl is painstakingly naturalistic in story, mood, visuals, and sound. A person's life is rarely consumed in a single plot line event. Most people handle tragedies like losing a job or inadvertently making a wife jealous, amongst getting married and your father going blind in a freak kiln accident. So too does Griet, heroine. The plot concerning paintings and Vermeer—the only one worth listening to, a butcher's fiance does little worth notice in her life—stops but Griet is not fazed.

Director and /or cinematographer, Peter Webber and/or Eduardo Serra, are clearly northern renaissance enthusiasts and familiar with how to copy the compositions of the time and place because shots and scenes often look far more like animated GIFs than they do like bits of movie. The three seconds of the servants eating with the family children, for example, seriously could be a Rembrant. Grit and her maid manager Tanneka sit upstage looking downstage and just left of center with the two eldest/tallest children flanking them facing each other so the audience sees them in profile. Two 5-7 year olds eat at the table with their backs turned to us to complete the circle. A single unseen candle is the only lighting and it shines forth from just right of center, making what would other wise be genuinely stodgy and overly framed (see Botticelli and most southern Renaissance paintings) is full of movement and not a little tension.

Like Austen novels that quiet, anal retentive romantics batedly devour, Girl hinges on layered tensions carefully folded into place. That is, the scene where nothing is said, but our heroine takes her skull cap off is one of the three climaxes. Editing (Kate Evans) contributes to movement, and even a feast-prep montage hurries things along. Webber will often end a cut on a percussive sound, like a floor brush scraping suds and sand off a step, and pick up on another, a hand pat to meat jelly or walking cane puncturing wood floor. It keeps attention up like little slaps to the face (if such are needed by ADD viewers with too much candy thrust in their faces).

Like my life, the rational is revered and the irrational hated, the artificial pointed at and respected for being so, even as it chases the natural essence of life. Vermeer immortalized seconds of life, fleeting impressions of life without reducing himself to half-blind approximations of brush strokes like the Impressionists claimed was true and correct. He captured human expression and emotion in those stills, not light on haystacks. However noble actual naturalists may be, they miss what is truly essential about vivid, conscious life in their ponderous dogma.

Tracy Chevalier, who wrote the book this screenplay is based on, captures this perfectly. She saw the painting Girl with a Pearl Earring, and noticed the surprised vulnerability on the model's face. Then she noticed that blue and yellow head dress was not exactly a fashion statement for the time. The artifice of the scarf, juxtaposed to the wetness of the girl's lips; the lack of facial make up juxtaposed to the rich weight of the pearl hanging from her one ear. How did a poor girl come to wear such a piece of jewelry in such a strange hair covering and be so turned on by it? A plot line was born of a few leaping assumptions.

Webber captures this. He lays out Chevalier's characters, motivations and actions growing naturally there from on a canvas at least as rich as one layered in “urine of elephants fed only on mango leaves” and precious stones otherwise hoarded by Tsars.

It is, in every way, the antithesis of Bad Boys 2 by Michael Bay, and although I appreciate an eleven minute car chase scene on an interstate with a never ending bridge on fire doused only in quippy swearing as much as the next adrenaline junky, it will never float my boat in quite the same way that almost touching fingertips daubed in ground lapis lazuli does.

That is, like the patron character Van Ruijven (Tom Wilkinson), Kiddo Porn most likely is fully clothed, sans the word “fuck” and accompanied by piano solos. 'Cus if you have to actually see people getting it on in order for your brain to engage, you are going to miss some crucial details that make the whole effort futile.

Bridget Jones: Edge of Reason

2004, Beebon Kidron

There absolutely are reasons for doing all things. Venturing in the world of movies you know are going to be bad, for example, reminds you why you watch Brick on repeat with intervals of Studio Ghibli and Bill & Ted. The Bridget Jones sequel is exactly that.

Even though the quirky feel-good original is delightful, sequels rarely are any good, especially when their budgets are doubled but the plot line and set pieces are demanded to be replicated almost exactly. It takes all the bloody magic right out of the first one plot and pieces. From the opening scene of torturous New Year’s party, to love triangle set-up, the same insecurities the same jokes about bums and knickers, the same fight scene between Darcy and Cleaver. It’s pretty drear.

The premise is good enough, yes, of course Bridget is going to be clingy and ridiculous now she has won Mark Darcy, but the number of embarrassing instances the writers put her through in the first 51 minutes that lead to her breaking up with said dream boat is beyond endearing and funny, and becomes a grotesque caricature of what was lovable about the first Jones film.

Thankfully, there are about 30 minutes of redemption then. There is a new adventure to be had. One that is actually interesting, and funny all in its own right. Bridget, as goofy TV reporter is, through a believable twist, partnered to Daniel Cleaver, the brilliant Hugh Grant role, and they are bound to Bangkok. I’m not giving anything away by saying they flirt as they film things. Like the first one, the chemistry between Zellweger and Grant is stellar and I end up kinda rooting for the man slut. In this instance the rooting is doubled after watching how foolishly Bridget genuinely squandered the Darcy love affair. I’d have dumped her way earlier, but then, in movies, no one is allowed to have reasonable conversations.

While in Bangkok Bridget runs into genuine trouble, ie. Jail, and Darcy has to rescue her while Cleaver visibly leaves her to the dogs. Perfect. It is also in this setting that we get a glimpse of genuine feminine bonding which I assume is what the demographic for which this film was made needs injecting with. Doubly perfect.

Then she’s suddenly back in Britain, and its all cocked up again with the revisitations of scenes past and jokes told.

Easy Rider

1969

Dennis Hopper

I watched Easy Rider and had my mind blown. The great thing about being saturated in crap new movies with their high saturation everything and epileptic editing and cinematography is that we can look at things like Easy Rider, 8 1/2, and The Good the Bad and the Ugly and have our minds genuinely blown by the different uses of camera. Who knew it was possible to actually manipulate your instruments for a variety of settings and situations? Not most blockbuster makers. JJ Abrams, much as I love him for his strong female characters and zany stories that actually catch me taking them seriously, is the perfect example of a director who can use "shaky fast cam" or "tight face tension cam" and nothing else.

Other things that blow my mind: Dennis Hopper. I am ashamed to say that I knew him first from a cameo in Entourage. The show made a big deal about how cool he was, and I just went along with it. Then I saw Blue Velvet. Clearly the man is a great actor. Then Gunfight at the OK Coral. And my heart almost skipped a beat he was so good looking. It was like watching Grapes of Wrath and seeing Henry Fonda's face for the first time. Or Kelly's Heroes with Clint Eastwood. I mean, damn. Good looking.

Then this. I recognized him immediately, then that the other guy was Henry Fonda's kid. And that opening! Steady shot of the Mexican shack. Everything in Spanish. No subtitles. Henry Fonda's kid is speaking Spanish. Then the meeting at the airport with sound mixing taken straight from Fellini or Godart. I was so disoriented I clung to these two laid back men with sweet sunglasses and jackets, knowing they, who were so cool in these crazy scenes, would get me through.

And the movie progresses. It's a picaresque. Each setting more home town american than the last, and becoming more restrictive as they go. It's simple, but what works better at making a point? A text book explaining the poetic devices in the book of Revelations or the book of Revelations? The parable is going to win.

What's better, is that 10 minutes from the end, at minute 121, I still had no idea how it would end. No clue. Could not predict a single thing. Is it because of the simplicity? Is it because of the repetitive nature of it? Is it because of the insanely abrupt and brutal nature of the ending?

After bonding so intensely with two characters we know to be good, and harmless, and completely unrelated to anything they see along the way, it is really shocking. And what's worse than that, is that I have watched half a dozen parodies of this ending (the best being the end of season 1 of The Venture Brothers) and other parts of the film.

It gets even better. Dennis Hopper didn't just star in it as a true incarnation of a free spirit, but directed it. And he and Henry Fonda's kid wrote it. It's beyond my comprehension. So good.

An American made, with a totally American feel and chunkiness found only in Hemingway novels, directed like a French New Wave or high style Fellini film.

Are there other movies like this? I am ready for options!

PS. Did I mention Jack Nicholson? Equally hot. Equally brilliant. As always, a scene stealer. Not even Dennis Hopper is able to withstand that man's presence on film.

The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow, 2008

Only about 20 seconds of this movie fail. The ending is can't help but burst into some crap nu metal as our anti-hero strides into a dusty sunset, but the rest of the two hours and three minutes are as near perfect as the poster says.

Tense, well written, well acted, well photographed – this director actually uses that horrid hand cam thing that 24 uses to subdue its audience into barfing submission correctly. She combines it with long shots, steady shots, medium shots. Like many other films with the interior of a car being a main set, she is forced to stay on people's faces longer than perhaps is prudent if you are afraid of air born contagions, but there is definitely about 5 minutes of time filmed in a Humvee that must have its door off in order to get the kind of personal space most humans like from one another.

She has reason to do this because she's directing another story from the current Iraq war. A squad of three soldiers are expert bomb detonators, getting called in all over Baghdad to disarm road bombs found in sacks, gravel, children, jackets, cars, you know, the usual.

What gives this movie a kick above things like Jarhead is the character. The characters are stylized from their original men (it's based on Mark Boal's accounts as an embedded reporter) into workable pieces of fiction. So stylized, they actually engage the audience more than Anthony Swofford can being so realistic. Either that or Jake Gyllenhaal sucks.

And when you go with no name actors you either win hard or lose hard. Bigelow approved some pretty amazing actors for the lead trio. When big names pop up (Ralph Fiennes has the sexiest cameo ever and Guy Pearce shows off his ever impressive American accent for three lines) and promptly die.

Fiction wins again with the story structure. While Band of Brothers was its own stranger than fiction jack pot of climaxes for one group of men, Generation Kill has to focus on non-plot related stuff some episodes and Schindler's List sort of war films focus so hard on a single story that they don't really have to use fiction to make a good film. The Hurt Locker combines these. It samples every type of bomb you hear about on the radio and CNN and illustrates it from the no-nonsense points of view of James, Sanborn and Eldridge.

These three make our elite team of “specialists”. They use a special bomb proof suit, robots, pliers, C4, detective skills, determination, some whiskey and a slew of concise insults and compliments to make it through the last 39 days of their tour. The heart weepy story here ties family back home and slaps it against the realities of war in a desert. Which, the audience is asked alongside James, Sanborn and Eldridge, is preferable?

And honestly, it will convince you. One way or the other.

Tension Low? Listen to some new Kills...

The Kills, Blood Pressures

2011

In this neck of the woods, I often hear the complaint "my tension is low". Moldovans refer to their blood pressure here. If they feel lackluster, they know it's because the ol' singe ain't thrummin so fine. It's like a country full of educated diabetics. It's awesome. We Murkans just say things like "i feel glum" or "I don't know what's wrong with me". Eat something salty and sweet and get on with it.

Also helpful: kick ass music.

The Kills have been (sorry) killing with their discography. Their first two albums sounding like they were written and recorded in a trash can behind the bar where The White Stripes were becoming famous. Which is to say, awesome and more aggressive about it.

Their third, Midnight Boom, departs a bit with synthy touches all over the place. Just as fundamental in makeup and design, just electronic. The departure is neither good nor bad for the band since it's just a different form of sounding really really good.

This new effort, 3 years later, is itself a synthesis. Blood Pressures has no electronic SOUNDING stuff, but the production itself, the electronic mixing and so forth, is so far and away more expensive sounding the listener knows they have landed among the rock angels at last.

Another way to say this is they sound like a British version of The White Stripes. Which, it turns out, they half are. The guy (brit) even married Kate Moss recently. The chick, meanwhile was drafted into one of Jack White's side projects (The Dead Weather). Blood Pressure was recorded in Michigan and mixed in London. We can see where this extra cash flow and recognition is coming from.

And where it's going. Blood Pressures is garage rock at its best. Where bands like the White Stripes and The Black Keys do garage rock in thick bluesy refrains and masculine bludgeoning, The Kills are sharp, and wickedly feminine racket-rousers.

For one thing, their lead singer is female. Alison Mosshart has an imperfect voice that drips with sardonic sex. Jamie Hince, backs up with some seriously delicate harmonies. The guitar work is precise, fuzzing out now and then with one or another of the climaxes per song. There are acoustics; there's finger slide work, there is variation in warp. There's reverb with finger picking layering over it. The noise makes a sick back drop for what they are actually presenting:

A sucker punched Clash/Nirvana confrontation. Audibly, it's gritty and loud. Emotionally it's brutal. Either it will jack up a second wind for you on a gray day, or it'll drain every last drop of frustration out of your cochleas.

Opening with Future Starts Slow, Mosshart and Hince declare their undying love for someone. who may "swing, you may sail / you can fuck like a broken sail/ but I'll never give you up". They know this person will also be the only one to "know what's left of my right mind". They get on with life regardless of its pitfalls.

The Last Goodbye, their only ballad, looks at better off days and sighs "I can't rely/on a dime a day/that dont go anywhere." Though the conviction is a bit weaker, the intent is the same. Life may give you lemons, and you don't even have to make the damn lemonade, just take the vitamin c.

Soon enough they revel in the sentiment with some very Shirley Mansonish thoughts in She Damned if She Do: "She come alive when she's dying/ ...some of them left in one piece/and some she damn near broke". They are not afraid of singing about life in the material crap shoot, or the romantic version.

Inspirational stuff for those cynics among us. Fun, head rocking stuff for those concert rats among us. It's even singable -- if you aren't afraid of projecting.

My tension's higher already.

Elise's Christmas Pop Mix

Elise's Christmas Pop Mix

Elise Ostergaard, 2011

My sisters have copped quite a bit of musical opinionating from me in their time. Last year this culminated in an anti-Christmas mix from Elise, one of these sisters. She went out of her Pandora way to find foreign and obscure music. She did pretty well on the account, almost found some. Sigor Ros was her crowning glory. Unfortunately I already owned and loved all their albums and played their music documentary in the background of drawing and such.

This year, she went the opposite direction. She found things I was certain not to listen to: Pop. Super popular, over produced, bump/grind music found pulsing through the ibuds of kids in the states. She knew I might not like it etc. but she is forcing me into knowledge and love of main stream pop.

The weird thing? I kinda like a lot of it. While I prefer to listen to lo-fi crooners with lyrics that span the breadth of the Bible and all the philosophy since then, or gritty rock for cleaning and anger purposes, I have found that Elise's mix keeps me on boring work track. Dozens of lesson plans need written and they're repetitive. Beyonce and Justin Timberlake (1 song) and Katy Perry(1 song), they have the perfect blend of fast metronome and bland sound that lets me concentrate on the nuances of scrambled sentence application and past perfect progressive tense explanations. If each song sounds like the last, I can gloss straight through.

I'll never bring myself to feel anything but the throat strangling contempt for Key$ha, but Lady Gaga (1 song), and Britney Spears (4 songs) I can really get into. They don't say terribly interesting things, they don't say anything in a particularly new way, but they have production teams that spend more money on one or another of these albums than the country I live in makes in a year. Not only that, but those production teams know what to do with each tool and person they employ.

The result is slick sounding beats and voices with predictable and wholly fulfilling buildups and climaxes. Quick stories are told, or single emotions explored, in a way that simple words can't deliver. Music is, after all, the quickest plug into the human brain for instant motivation. It's noise (pure animal stimulus) and words (advanced human stimulus). It's not just connecting on a cognitive level, but also on an instinctive one.

The reason pop music kicks so much ass, and becomes so inherently popular is because it synthesizes these in the same time. Instinctively, we want to move our butts to the beat in a way our brains can't quite grasp. Cognitively, we're connecting with the woman/man telling us a woe or urging us to indulge that ass motion. And the production teams know when the words get more urgent, they have to add more instruments, up the tempo, change the key, change the tempo altogether, bring in some background choir, warp the voice(s) or whatever. They are The Band for The Face.

This mix Elise made me, pretty freaking listenable—there are even some bands on here who embody all parts of album art: writing, music making and production. La Roux, for example is not only well put together, instrument and technology-wise, but they have a unique flavor. Their syncopated electronics and experimentation with voice aesthetics etc are the same thing that draws me to The Faint and The Kills.

More surprises were B.O.B's Airplanes, a laid back hip hop thing, and Handlebars by Flobot, with a buildup that includes staccato strings and mariachi trumpets.

Saddest moment: Kanye West over-sampling Daft Punk's Harder, Faster, Stronger, Better, and a couple songs I listened to a couple times but deleted regardless because they were just too much badness that I expect from mainstream music. The other 16 songs though—awesome.

Batlle: Los Angeles

Jonathan Liebesman

Though the title's use of snappy punctuation promises great things, this movie lacks some essentials: Ice Cube, Jerry Bruckheimer, Robert Downey Jr. as a black man and /or Jeff Goldblum.

Instead of leading characters, played by dynamic, charismatic actors we get some hard-core guys who auditioned for Generation Kill and failed. The best we get are Aaron Eckhart doing his damnedest to put pathos into an aging staff sergeant and Michelle Rodriguez's air force … something.

For Rodriguez, this is her element: hot, hard-core chick out with the boys in a knife + gun fight. She gives the best delivery of lines, moves the most naturally, and steals the best line (I'm not giving anything away by telling you it's “That hurt!” as she retaliates against an alien).

Eckhart, however, is rightfully typecast as the swaggering charmer of Thank You for Smoking and The Dark Knight's Harvey Dent. He is able to deliver serious lines like “your brother was my friend and I miss him every day,” but he also seems too smart for them to be coming out of his mouth.

The writing just doesn't let either of them take the movie by storm. I kept waiting for them to go off as a pair, jet around on automated, alien drone ships, or, at the very least, work together to take down the mother ship. There was teasing to this end, but action kept being dispersed to what could easily be a Desperate Housewife, some useless marine from New Jersey, another useless marine straight out of officer training, someone with a mustache... etc.

So much for a good movie skeleton. That's fine—it's an alien movie. I can watch Transformers despite the teenage melodrama—there are transformers transforming WHILE THEY FLY. It's cool. I'll just wait for these aliens to do cool things, too.

But, alas. They look pretty neat. They make really fun sounds. Their ships kick ass. Skywalker Ranch might just want to gang press the people who designed those hovering, sectional drone ships. However, again, the coolest things are denied their natural birth-rite. As soon as we get a good shot of them, the cameras movie to the face of a screaming child, or scared marine^¹.

Why? Because Liebesman had a vision. He was going to make this movie as a war documentary sort of thing, but with aliens. A nice concept. How would America really react to an alien invasion? Suddenly, the evacuation, chain of command, and dispersal of dramatic action makes sense.

I get it, but the reason Generation Kill is so good, the reason Black Hawk Down is so good, the reason Saving Private Ryan won all those Oscars is not just because of their lack of aliens, but because the characters are fucking brilliant and the writing allows genuine humans to say and do genuine human things.

Besides, Gen. Kill has seven plus hours to let us care about a dozen different guys. And Black Hawk and Ryan are both movies first and realistic second. You know this because they start at one time with funerals and such, then back pedal through time. The film colors change. The sets are recognizably different places. It's tough to differentiate and design sets for bombed-to-shit apartment complexes in Santa Monica, but that's why they pay you the big bucks.

You can only rely on “it's supposed to be realistic, man.” for so long. Especially when your allowing already charred cars to bully a single hand grenade into a 30 foot plume of fire that miraculously takes out (for all intents and purposes) an ATAT and three humanoids. Previously marines had to empty three assault rifle magazines into a single alien to kill it. Discrepancies like this accumulate the closer Liebesman gets to the 2 hour mark and somehow has to resolve everything.

There are two sorts of sci fi flicks: Alien and Armegeddon. One takes itself seriously. One doesn't. Unfortunately, B:LA sets up characters who very much take themselves seriously, and puts them in a situation that by no rights should be treated seriously.

For better versions of this film, download:

1. Independence Day

2. Peter Jackson's District 9

3. Generation Kill

4. Plan 9 from Outer Space

¹The marines I know wouldn't take this much time gawking. That's their whole raison detre: to be focused. The number of times Eckhart has to tell not only his subordinates or commander to focus is enough to make me want to insert myself, Uzis at ready.

Dear Whore Goddess, "Burlesque" Does You No Justice

Burlesque

Steve Antin, 2010

An endearing attempt at romanticizing something genuinely awesome and falling on its badly written face with plot.

There are two stories here. 1. Christina Aguilera goes from Iowa to LA to be a singer and is so dazzled by the first bar she walks into she decides to be a burlesque dancer. 2. Burlesque is a romantic, girl-friendly version of stripping.

Preference is given to Aguilera's sweeter-than-ether, workaholic, vocal prodigy plot. Ali (Christina Aguilera) is somewhere between Floozy and Modern Woman, but is marginally less annoying than Liza Minelli in Cabaret (Gelatin Hour #2). In fact the whole thing is like Cabaret minus the Nazis. In place of Nazis we have real estate sharks. Instead of picturesque Berlin, we have LA. Instead of characters with complex motivation, we have people-as-props.

Of the three leads (Chick, Mentor, Love Interest) only Mentor has the genius to act her way through a flat character. Cher, thank you. Christina Aguilera is hot as hot gets and has pipes to out-shine and wail and belt any pop diva out of her way, but she is given a bad character here and has no idea what to do with it. The Love Interest's appearances defy ridicule. The other living models are dancers interchangably trying to recapture some Fosse, and are let down by lackluster choreography.

Thankfully, the background characters are played by competent people. Stanley Tucci, Kristen Bell and Alan Cummings completely steal the show from the Chick, Love Interest and the dancers. Bringing us to Examples of Purpose 2:

a. “When you're putting on your makeup, it's like you're an artist. Except instead of painting on a canvas, you're painting on your face.” instructs Tess to inexplicably uninstructed Ali.

b. Three original song numbers titled after it and devoted to it.

How do the characters feel about dancing burlesque? After all, burlesque dancing is a charming, sometimes comical, and usually tongue-in-cheek version of stripping. The only dialogue is written in example a. up there. Clearly Tess loves her club, but if it's because she's just stubborn or really likes the place is unclear.

The others just wanna be idolized (read: objectified). The fact that they never address this leaves the entire escapade hollow and whorish. It's third wave feminism at its worst, rather than letting third wave really grasp at something empowering.

That is, Tess is the savvy proprietress of Burlesque, the, uh, burlesque club. She's tough, full of advice, and business retarded. She can fix anything in the club with talk and a glue gun, but she can't even bring her self to try to understand the mortgages of the building she's being forced to sell..Ali meanwhile grabs at every girly thing and reacts to all her situations sans thought.

Normally I don't like getting on the Vagina Soapbox, but when shitty lost feminism gets in the way of otherwise superfun dance numbers with ostrich feather fans, stripey tights, finger snapping, and tango music – well, that's just a fucking sin.

And not a fun one like burlesque, the dramatic caricaturing act, is supposed to be.

Katy Perry -- Firework

Loathe as I am, historically, to condone over-produced poppy mass pop, I just watched the video for Katy Perry's single Firework, and actually, physically, teared up.

I don't even like this song very much. It's predictable and even dull on its audio own. So, here's proof that visuals sure help people pay attention.

It has all the makings of a fearsomly air brushed, sentimental tear drop of a video. Airbrushed heroine. Candy-sweet colors. Linear build-up of action to a climax. That climax features spontaneous dancing in the streets.

And the supposed plotline follows some of the more saccharine stereotypes: Female Alopecia Victim. Fat Girl at Pool Party. Scared Gay Boy in Public. And of course, as Perry's gospel-trained voice swells, they break out of their shells and join the fun! woo!

Things that counteract this:

1. Ridiculously bright fireworks bursting from their chests. At first inkling of challenging their inner fears shows as a little glow. When the camera catches them making the decision to live fully, little sparks appear. When the Victim runs out of the hospital, Fat Girl jumps into the pool in her panties, and Gay Boy displays some very public affection, these sparks shoot forth in volleys of ecstatic color. I am such a sucker for surreal imagery.

2. The fact that there is a clear telling of each character's story. In 3 minutes and 45 seconds, the viewer swallows no fewer than 5 fully told story lines.

3. There is a woman in severe pain, giving birth. She's only a step in Victim's journey, but she bursts with fireworks. Damned cool.

4. Perry herself ends the thing wearing a summer dress I think I own. Go fashion sense that doesn't always demand sluttishness.

Yep. Maybe I'm over tired, under exposed to humanity, haven't been hugged in awhile. Maybe the idealistic nature of my work is getting to me (I did overdose on JFK and Sargent Shriver videos yesterday) but whatever it is, I suggest you head over to YouTube and watch this thing.

Brick

Brick

2005, Rian Johnson

A black and blue detective story told without pulling a single punch or dropping a single cliché. Beautifully written and directed. Delicately acted. With a host of teenagers playing what could quickly become a melodrama, and with mouths full of slang like:

Brick - A term used to describe a pound or kilogram of any drug, in the case of this film, its heroin.
Bulls - Cops; e.g., "What first, tip the bulls? Also, as a verb, to turn over to the cops; e.g., "I bulled the rat."
Copped - Obtained; e.g., "She copped the junk."
Duck Soup - Easy pickings.
On the Nail - immediately; e.g., "He wants cash on the nail. That's a pot-skulled reef-worm with more hop in his head than blood. Why pay for dirt you can't believe?"
Pick - A ride in a car (as in "pick-up"); e.g., "Did she get a pick?"
Raise - To get in touch with; e.g., "You couldn't raise 'em?" This is also used cleverly when Brain asks Brendan, "You couldn't raise her?" referring to Emily whom he could neither contact nor raise, as in raise from the dead.
Shamus - A private detective.
Shine - To wield (as with a weapon); e.g., "He shines a blade."
Take A Powder - To slip away; e.g., "Why'd you take a powder the other night?"
Yegg - A criminal

It's a wonder the cast does not blow the screen up with hot air. How the characters all remain calm and collected is a mystery in itself.

It's probably due to two things: Johnson's direction and his casting choices. Our lead is the grossly underused Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and he is supported by chameleon Lukas Haas, Lost's Emilie de Ravin and the gorgeous (I swear she looks just like my friend Faith) Nora Zehetner. The whole lot are talented character actors and it shows. They find ways of posturing, leaning, slouching, blinking, smoking, holding hands, running. They're amazing.

Granted, they have a tight script and pretty well-worn characters to fulfill (Brendan was Bogey, Laura was Greta Garbo, the Pin – Sidney Greenstreet).

Our Bogey/Sam Spade is Brendan Frye, loner extraordinaire. He eats lunch behind the trash cans of the school, reading Faulkner. Ostensibly, his ex girlfriend Emily Kostich ate there too, three months ago, before they broke up.

She dumped him, you see, because he was so determined to be this loner, to hate on everyone. And he ratted out one of their small time drug dealing friends to the school VP.

Yep, the romance is laid in the tangled plot of a drug deal gone horribly wrong, and little Emily takes the rap. Our very first image, in fact, is of sweet Emily's limp, braceleted hand in a sewage stream. No punches pulled.

The rest of the movie follows Brendan as he sets out to “break some deserving teeth.” Of course he learns more than he ever wanted to know, and nearly loses a few of his own teeth in the process. And so a dozen supporting characters surface and glitter their exquisite word play, and down play their emotional motivations, mislead, swipe at and dodge each other, pushing Brendan to the brink of what a normal 17 year old is capable of handling.

He's not a normal 17 year old, he's a character, by all appearances 30 years older, so he can. Johnson has remade the Raymond Chandler, Dashiel Hammet story and dressed it down to a place we would never have expected or recognized it. It's Swiftian satire, but with absolutely no humor or irony.

Not a brilliant turn, perhaps, but it has a brilliant outcome. Brick is stunning from start to finish, from music to schematics. If you know nothing or everything about film, this is a beautiful thing to behold.

Unless maybe you have a glass jaw. In which case, scurry down to the local Blockbuster, or scurry to your remote and order/download The Brothers Bloom. Brilliant for all the same directorial reasons, but with a fun, upbeat heist through Eastern Europe feel.

Fun Fact You Can't Find on IMDB: The whole cast of Brick appears in the first party scene of Bloom. Apparently they quite liked each other off screen!

The Kids are All Right

The Kids are All Right

2010, Lisa Cholodenko

Don't let the light color palette and airy trees and open spaces fool you. This film means to be taken seriously. Lesbian raised families are now a norm in California, sure, and the kids are super normal suburban kids. . . but what's this? A sperm donor? Curiosity? What?

Enter the nominee roles of Annette Benning and Mark Ruffalo. They play the head of said family and donor, respectively. Both put in an effortless seeming performance. Both pull sympathy from their audience, and their characters hate each other. If not directly in accordance to the script, then certainly in accordance with their humanity.

That is, they are written as people trying to comply with society in order to nurture the teenagers on the brink of success/failure from opposite court ends. They even, conveniently, represent opposite ends of parenting extremes. It's beautiful. It's a p.c. American Beauty. Will Benning win this time round?

Honestly, I hope not. Her role in AM had a dozen more turns of emotion than this. Though it's brilliant to see a woman directing / writing up for Academy recognition, she tries so hard to present normalcy that the movie itself falls a little flat of its objectives. She even sets up a Chekov's Pistol in the form of a hot hippy chick with dreadlocks, and dumps her two lines out of a requisite five.

Bad form.

It's nice, evenly paced, well costumed, well acted etc. but it does not jump out and grab you and demand you listen. In fact the most interesting characters (son and cheater half of the parenting duo) are snubbed over all. In an attempt to be totally equal and forgiving of everyone, there is no lead role. The fact that Benning is up for Best Actress is a joke because she is written as a supporting role of Julianne Moore and Ruffalo, who in turn support the kids, who in turn support the hippies, who supprot Ruffalo who supprots Benning.

It's brilliant if you want a panoramic view of a contemporary family unit, post-Diablo Cody, but otherwise kinda dull.

The King's Speech

The King's Speech

2010, Tom Hooper

A lovely movie whose settings barely matter in the face of the actors. That is The King's Speech, as you may be able to tell from reading a one-line plot blurb, is only worth watching if you want to see actors giving performances. The plot is dull, the writing trite, and the cinematography and music overwrought in the hopes of lending weight and emotion to a simple turn of tension: The first king of the civilized world totally on the airwaves has a frightening stammer.

Colin Firth surpasses an already stellar career. Geoffrey Rush is average Geoffrey Rush. Supporting cast of Helena Bonham Carter and Guy Pearce are fluid and engaging. This film is made for the physical personality of the Academy Awards. In fact, Firth and Rush are so good their chemistry outshines the romantic roles prominent in this years awards. As much as I love Marky Mark, he just can't deliver passion to my perfect Amy Adams as well as either of these men.

Otherwise, seriously, this movie just puts every effort possible into drama that simply can't be felt by a normal audience. The only blip of real energy in the film is in the last 9 minutes. In these last 9 minutes Firth delivers the speech of a generation—that given on September the 3^rd, 1939 by George the third to the entire empire going up against Hitler.

The whole bloody plot leads to this, and no where in this plot do we care. However, the Anglophile audience member will have heard this speech delivered a dozen times, and teared up each time. Thus, an actor impersonating it, with a sweet montage of empire hoipoloi tearing up, cannot help but bring a bittersweet sting to the listener's ear.

Otherwise, almost a total waste of emotional investment and 2 hours of my time.

Black Swan

Black Swan

2010, Darren Aronofsky

POSSIBLE SPOILER

The most beautifully put together show of the power of the human mind I've yet encountered. I no more regret ditching ballet when I was 6 now, than I did 3 hours ago, but I am inspired. Aronofsky has managed to seduce his audience and fill them with horror. He uses gimmicky, overly visual things we expect from him, from his repertoire, but controls himself better than usual to actually tell the story, not just splurge on gorgeous sets.

Nina Sayers, after a bunch of initial tension to set the scene of a professional ballerina's life, gets the part of a lifetime: not just the White Swan of Swan Lake, but the Black Swan too. Nina excels in the white half, but can't get it through her control-crazed mind to relax and actually take control, rather than keep herself under control. The odyssey then is Nina realizing in order to do as she's told, she has to break all the rules she thinks are already in place. At the end of the day, it's like trying to make a killer android's head explode.

And explode it shall, for how else can the marvelous Aronofsky work his trade mark surreality into the film? Dopplegangers, animal sounds from humans, talking paintings, anthropomorphism... Yet, in this instance, I feel he might actually have restrained, himself, a little too much. Most of the crazy stuff is saved for the end. Like the producers were reining him in at every scene.

Instead, he relies on filling Nina's life with wholly realistic shows of being overly immersed in a little princess' world (dozens of stuffed animals, all pink everything at home, mother's obsessive paintings of her daughter) desperately trying to take control (she continuously barricades herself in her bed or bath room).

He makes tension by keeping the tightest possible shots on Nina. He goes way overboard on setting up character through costume choice. Nina is always in white. Her rival, Lily, is always in black, and even has a giant tattoo across her back. Her ring tone for her mom is the pinnacle for Swan Lake. Her mom puts on a wind up ballerina jewelery box playing, you guessed it, the pinnacle for Swan Lake. It's this shit that pulls away from the suspension of disbelief – not the spontaneous growth of feathers on one's back.

Either because Aronofsky himself is fascinated by the gritty lives of ballerinas, or he's trying to show the duplicitous tensions therein. Either way, it works. At every possible opportunity he points out masochistic crackings, rippings, pukings. The only slow motion is in an early scene. Tight on of Nina's foot as she lands all her weight repeatedly on the point of her toes of one foot you can see the floor boards bend under the force. Later, there's a scene with the physical therapist/chiropractor. A past habit of self-abuse leads Nina's mother to strip her naked and cut Nina's nails for her. How to break in a new pair of shoes: with scissors and banging and ripping.

The overall effect is a stunning balance between grit and pure satin—the two sides Nina tries so hard to capture in her life. Ever willing to help is the ever-in-black Lily. She is the perfect opposite of Nina. She is promiscuous, always wears a ton of make up, dances with her long hair down and is crazy sure of herself. And she does help...sort of. Lily becomes a fixation of what Nina knows she needs and incorporates this into her growing psychosis.

So easy to let this one go awry, Aronofsky, or his (no kidding) 15 producers, keep it together right to the end. Dream or hallucination scenes have heavy uses of mirrors and tampering with the light. Realistic scenes don't have ambient music. Initial verification for later hallucinations are established immediately, thus the audience is sucked in immediately.

Depending on how you feel about “living fully in the moment” or achieving perfection, Nina does manage to wrestle this out of herself. Through the pressures of her rival, her mother and her director (does ballet have a special name for that?) Nina alternates her clamping with new rebellions as she slowly starts realizing what people may or may not mean by “lose yourself in the role.”

Gluing it all together is the soundtrack to Swan Lake itself. Already haunting, Aronofsky wracks a dozen lesser known strains of it through the repeated practice sessions. He abstracts strains of them and reverbs them between cuts. Not a lot. Just enough to be jarring. Oh, and blending in techno for the ecstasy scene of course. But even that has an underlying riff of Swan Lake. The soundtrack holds it all together.

Major plot hole type things. Why is Lily not chosen over Nina? Is she so much better just in Nina's obesessive head? No. It's verified by Thomas. Why does Thomas focus only on Nina's dancing when all he has to critique her is her attitude. We see three instances early on of him trying to pull out this darker, more fluid, magnetic character. It clearly isn't the steps that are her problem.

Major awesomenss: all the performances. I think, under-appreciated always is Vincent Cassel. Very subtle cuts and shifts of perspective. The exquisite layering of clothes the ballerinas wear: uggs, leg warmers, arm warmers, whatever “shrugs” are, leotards, cami tops, tights, socks, shoes, things on one leg and not the other, things on one arm and not the other, hoodies, scarves, earrings... It's a guidebook on how to look like a collage.

Overall, very very good. Not the best, not my favorite, but I've watched it 3 times in 2 days and like it more each time. Besides, this story isn't confined to ballet. It's the path of the girl's mind that matters. The steps, the dance, are just a vehicle for showing her ascension and downfall to perfect artistic expression.