eclecticism

A couple weeks ago, I got an e-mail from Jaime Weinman, who writes for Macleans (in her words, “sort of Canada’s TIME and NEWSWEEK”), asking for a quote for an article she was working on about Pixar’s future. I agreed, and in my usual style, sent her a small book. The final article was published late in June, and — proving yet again that I just cannot write for soundbites — my quote was boiled down to one simple line:

[Non-Pixar animated films] follow the Pixar example in some respects; they’ve especially learned from the fact that Pixar’s movies all focus on male characters and appeal the most to boys. (Michael Hanscom, a computer analyst who blogs at michaelhanscom.com, dubbed WALL-E “MISOGYN-E” and says that while he likes Pixar, he’s not going to see their movies in theatres “until we see some evidence that they’ve let a girl into the clubhouse to play.”) But for the most part, these movies are far away from Pixar’s artist-oriented approach.

Heh. Not at all inaccurate (except, perhaps, for titling me a ‘computer analyst,’ as flattering as that is) — and believe me, this is not a complaint, I don’t envy Jaime or her editors the task of boiling my response down to something that would fit within the scope of the article — but for the sake of completion, under the jump is my full response to her question. If you’ve read my earlier posts on this matter, there are no big surprises awaiting.

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Last night, Prairie and I watched The Mist, the recent adaptation of an old Stephen King short story.

Short review: for the first 120 minutes or so, while we had some quibbles with the decisions made, it’s a remarkably faithful adaptation of the original story, and we were really enjoying it. Unfortunately, the last five minutes of the film completely ruined it for us.

If you rent it, I strongly recommend stopping it about five minutes before the end, right about the 1:20 mark. That would be a worthwhile ending, and one that’s more or less true to the original story.

Spoilers after the jump…

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A bit of pseudo-Shakespearean silliness, originally by ceruleanst:

ACT I SCENE 2. A road, morning. Enter a carriage, with JULES and VINCENT, murderers.

J: And know’st thou what the French name cottage pie?
V: Say they not cottage pie, in their own tongue?
J: But nay, their tongues, for speech and taste alike
   Are strange to ours, with their own history:
   Gaul knoweth not a cottage from a house.
V: What say they then, pray?
J: Hachis Parmentier.
V: Hachis Parmentier! What name they cream?
J: Cream is but cream, only they say le crème.
V: What do they name black pudding?
J: I know not;
   I visited no inn it could be bought.

J: My pardon; did I break thy concentration?
   Continue! Ah, but now thy tongue is still.
   Allow me then to offer a response.
   Describe Marsellus Wallace to me, pray.
B: What?
J: What country dost thou hail from?
B: What?
J: How passing strange, for I have traveled far,
   And never have I heard tell of this What.
   What language speak they in the land of What?
B: What?
J: The Queen’s own English, base knave, dost thou speak it?
B: Aye!
J: Then hearken to my words and answer them!
   Describe to me Marsellus Wallace!
B: What?
JULES presses his knife to BRETT’s throat
J: Speak ‘What’ again! Thou cur, cry ‘What’ again!
   I dare thee utter ‘What’ again but once!
   I dare thee twice and spit upon thy name!
   Now, paint for me a portraiture in words,
   If thou hast any in thy head but ‘What’,
   Of Marsellus Wallace!
B: He is dark.
J: Aye, and what more?
B: His head is shaven bald.
J: Has he the semblance of a harlot?
B: What?
JULES strikes and BRETT cries out
J: Has he the semblance of a harlot?
B: Nay!
J: Then why didst thou attempt to bed him thus?
B: I did not!
J: Aye, thou didst! O, aye, thou didst!
   Thou hoped to rape him like a chattel whore,
   And sooth, Lord Wallace is displeased to bed
   With anyone but she to whom he wed.

(via Boing Boing)

Last weekend, Prairie and I went out to see I Am Legend at the local second-run theater, and we both came out with the same opinion — not a bad flick, until the end. For some reason, the last ten minutes or so of the film completely diverge from everything that had been set up until that point, taking what had been an interesting apocalyptic zombie film and ruining it for us with an ending that didn’t make any sense.

When we got home, I did a little poking around, and read on the film’s Wikipedia entry that the theatrical ending was actually (and unsurprisingly) a studio-mandated reshoot, and differed drastically from the ending as originally shot. Prairie and I were planning on renting the DVD release to see the original ending, but now, it’s been leaked to the web…and it is so, so much better than the crap that was released to the theaters. Obviously, you shouldn’t watch this if you haven’t seen the film and/or are worried about spoilers, but if you weren’t happy with the film as released, you really should check this out.

Now here’s a presidential candidate I can get behind.

McClane was fighting the war on terror before it even had a name — and he’s proven he can win it.

John McClane believes in strong health care — he just doesn’t have time to get to a doctor when he’s being shot at.

McClane gets that technology creates as many problems as it solves. Relying on a gadget is no replacement for doing it yourself.

McClane knows that patriotism isn’t about waving a flag while you sit on the couch watching ‘American Idol’. It’s about getting off your butt and fighting for what’s right.

McClane is the American cowboy for our times. He gets how important action-packed portrayals of true heroism are.

Since he hasn’t announced a running mate yet, given that I’m not in entire agreement with his stance on technology, may I suggest Angus MacGyver? Equally as able to get out and get things done, but his willingness to use and adapt available technology would be a nice balance to McClane’s ‘hands-on’ approach.

(via nyquil.org)

When I first heard that work was beginning on a new Star Trek film, I suppose you could have described my first response as ‘cautiously optimistic’ — however, that reaction would have swayed far more towards the caution side of things than the optimism side.

However, as more and more (non-spoilery) details appear, I’m moving more and more towards the ‘optimism’ side. While there are still a few little details that raise warning flags (for instance, that the script was written by the guys who wrote Transformers), overall, things are looking good.

Recently, director J.J. Abrams, writer and producer Roberto Orci and a fair chunk of the cast and crew spent a little time between shots doing a couple of Q-and-A sessions on the Trek Movie fan weblog. Full transcripts are posted here and here, but they’ve thoughtfully provided an ‘executive summary’ list. All in all, I think there’s a lot of promise here.

• First full trailer currently in the works, targeting early- to mid-summer release
• Principal photography is scheduled to wrap at the beginning of April [about 1-2 weeks more than originally planned]
• Documentaries on the film’s pre-production and production process can be expected on DVD release; Making of… book also discussed
• [J.J. Abrams friend and frequent collaborator] Greg Grunberg will not appear in Star Trek due to his commitment to another film
• About 1,000 effects shots are expected to be used in the film (more than any previous Trek film)
• Target MPAA rating: PG-13
• The two biggest challenges for Abrams were getting a handle on the vision of the future and casting the film
• Humor is a very important aspect in the film (“humor and humanity go hand-in-hand”)
• Abrams’ goal is to make Trek ‘real’ and is thus utilizing sets and location shooting rather than green- or blue-screens wherever he can
• The Enterprise “will be a combo of the physical and the virtual”
• An image of the Enterprise is “coming soon”
• The doors on the Enterprise will go “SWOOSH!” when they open.
• The set of the Enterprise bridge will be stored for future use;
• the movie’s script is about 128 pages long (indicating a roughly 2 hour movie)
• the script took about four months to write
• [Orci] and co-writer Alex Kurtzman will not be making cameos in the film
• James T. Kirk and the film’s villain (Nero) were the most difficult characters to write;
• the TOS episode “Balance of Terror” and the second, third, fourth and sixth films helped shape the writers’ takes on the characters, as did novels by Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens.
• Script shoots for many memorable moments akin to the “Never forget the name of the ship…Enterprise” moment in TNG “Yesterday’s Enterprise”
• Film makers have kept with Trek tradition and brought in academic and scientific consultants (more info on this promised)

This was an entertaining little quiz — identifying classic sci-fi from short sound clips.

	I received 86 credits on The Sci Fi Sounds Quiz How much of a Sci-Fi geek are you?
Take the Sci-Fi Movie Quiz

Most were pretty obvious to me, but not all of ‘em.

Vanity Fair has a huge article looking at the new Indiana Jones movie, and midway through, there are some quotes from Spielberg that sent two thoughts running through my brain. The first was that what he was saying was making me more excited about this latest sequel than I already was. The second was how desperately I wished more directors would think like Spielberg does here (don’t worry, there aren’t any movie spoilers):

Rather than update the franchise to match current styles, Lucas and Spielberg decided to stay true to the prior films’ look, tone, and pace. During pre-production, Spielberg watched the first three Indiana Jones movies at an Amblin screening room with Janusz Kaminski, who has shot the director’s last 10 films. He replaces Douglas Slocombe, who shot the first three Indy movies (and is now retired at age 94), as the man mainly responsible for the film’s look. “I needed to show them to Janusz,” Spielberg says, “because I didn’t want Janusz to modernize and bring us into the 21st century. I still wanted the film to have a lighting style not dissimilar to the work Doug Slocombe had achieved, which meant that both Janusz and I had to swallow our pride. Janusz had to approximate another cinematographer’s look, and I had to approximate this younger director’s look that I thought I had moved away from after almost two decades.”

That much already had me nodding and thinking good things, and then he went on….

Spielberg promises no tricky editing for the new one, saying, “I go for geography. I want the audience to know not only which side the good guy’s on and the bad guy’s on, but which side of the screen they’re in, and I want the audience to be able to edit as quickly as they want in a shot that I am loath to cut away from. And that’s been my style with all four of these Indiana Jones pictures. Quick-cutting is very effective in some movies, like the Bourne pictures, but you sacrifice geography when you go for quick-cutting. Which is fine, because audiences get a huge adrenaline rush from a cut every second and a half on The Bourne Ultimatum, and there’s just enough geography for the audience never to be lost, especially in the last Bourne film, which I thought was the best of the three. But, by the same token, Indy is a little more old-fashioned than the modern-day action adventure.”

The script, Spielberg says, can provide the blockbuster pace. “Part of the speed is the story,” he says. “If you build a fast engine, you don’t need fast cutting, because the story’s being told fluidly, and the pages are just turning very quickly. You first of all need a script that’s written in the express lane, and if it’s not, there’s nothing you can do in the editing room to make it move faster. You need room for character, you need room for relationships, for personal conflict, you need room for comedy, but that all has to happen on a moving sidewalk.”

Not just yes, but hell yes.

I was skeptical when I first started hearing about Indy 4, but the more little bits leak out (though I am endeavoring to stay spoiler free), the more I’m looking forward to seeing this one.

Given that I don’t have enough of a regular readership to really make this a game, and that I don’t want to have to constrain myself to any sort of real schedule, I’m going to change the way I’m doing this ratings game thing. Seeing as how the point is really just about the silliness of the MPAA’s ratings rationales, I’ll just toss one up whenever I feel like it. I won’t immediately give away which movie the rating comes from, but you can click through the rating to figure it out. It’s all just for fun, after all!

Some time within the past couple years, it seems to have become standard (whether voluntarily or by decree, I don’t know) for all new DVDs to flash the MPAA rating on screen for a few moments just before the movie begins. Additionally, for the past few years the MPAA has been including a brief description underneath the rating of why the movie in question has received its particular rating.

I’m constantly amused by these little blurbs and their attempt to rationalize, in fifteen words or less, what prompted the MPAA to assign the rating it did to each movie. So, I thought we could try a little game: every so often (whenever I get around to it, hopefully no less than once a week), I’ll post the MPAA rating and rationalization. Your goal is to try to guess the film, based solely on the MPAA’s rating and their description of its faults. I’ll post the answer either after someone guesses it correctly, or later on if it has remained a mystery.

Number one, then…any guesses?

1. 1957: Cosmic View: The Universe in 40 Jumps, by Kees Boeke.

2. 1968: Cosmic Zoom, a Canadian animated short film inspired by Boeke’s book.

3. 1977: Powers of Ten, a short film by Charles and Ray Eames, inspired by the prior two pieces. This is the most commonly known version of this presentation.

4. 2004: The Simpsons parody version (10.3 Mb .mov file), as the couch gag for The Ziff Who Came to Dinner

All links via Kottke.

Your Score: Jordan Cochran

140 Heart, 138 Genius, 157 Cool, 144 Excitability

Jordan Cochran — (Michelle Meyrink)
Real Genius (1985)

You’re Jordan Cochran, the adorable fast-talking GIRL scientist of all things. While she may not be up there with the other super-geniuses of the ’80s, her awesome mechanical aptitude and geek-girl cuteness have made her the sweetheart of nerds for over 20 years.

“I never sleep, I don’t know why. I had a roommate and I drove her nuts, I mean really nuts, they had to take her away in an ambulance and everything. But she’s okay now, but she had to transfer to an easier school, but I don’t know if that had anything to do with being my fault. But listen, if you ever need to talk or you need help studying just let me know, ‘cause I’m just a couple doors down from you guys and I never sleep, okay?”

Other scientific possibilities: Gary Wallace, Wyatt Donnelly, Peter Venkman, Jordan Cochran, Egon Spengler, Doc Brown, Newton Crosby, Paul Stephens, Ben Crandall, Wayne Szalinkski, Winston Zeddemore, Ben Jabituya, Lazlo Hollyfeld, Ray Stantz, Buckaroo Banzai, Chris Knight

Link: The Which 80s Movie Scientist Test

Amusing side note: Jordan is one of the first movie character crushes I ever had when I was growing up.

Historical side note: Jordan was based on a real Caltech student:

And, yes, Jordan of Real Genius was based, at least in part, on me. My class’s president and social organizers decided to ask me in on an interview being done by the movies producers and so there I was in one of the fanciest restaurants in Pasadena wrapped in a slightly oversized sweater that I’d knit myself one night when I was cold, talking blithly about life at Caltech without, from what folks say, a single breath. One of the most amusing things in my life was, fifteen years later, seeing that movie with a roomful of my friends from Temple Square and, the minute Jordan introduces herself in a long string of breathless sidetrains having the entire room turn to just look at me afterwards. That was most amusing. As Cera says, she has my voice.

I’ve learned about commas since. Also about breathing. And, finally, yes, I’ve also learned to finally sleep once in a while, though that took staying up 72 hours for a project while I was doing my MSEE at the University of Washington and having my body literally fall asleep on me before it shut down completely to really bring that lesson home.

Hm. I should put in here, also, that I’m the only Caltech woman that I knew was actually interviewed for source material; but I tried for a whole perspective about the female experience at the school. Not just me. It was an ME friend of mine that did the scuba gear testing in the pool, and while all the physically possible things that Jordan did were done by some Caltech woman, it wasn’t necessarily me. I’m also very sure that Dave Marvit and the other Caltech consultants for the movie all contributed some of what they knew about the females of the school to Jordan’s character as well. So I’m pretty sure she’s a composit of the others who were there at that time. Personally, I was just glad that they got her right.

Tideland is one of the most bizarre and disturbing films I’ve seen in a long time. Terry Gilliam certainly isn’t getting any more normal as the years go by.

With more marketing materials coming out for Pixar’s upcoming movie Wall•E, it’s becoming quite clear that they are continuing with a trend that I’ve mentioned previously (briefly here, and in more depth here) of being extremely male centered in creating characters for their animated films.

At first, I thought there might be a little bit of hope, as while the main character is given a male name, it is a robot — and, further, as there apparently is little to no spoken dialogue in the film, one might (at this point) argue that Wall•E is technically sexless. Admittedly, it’s a bit dodgy, given our tendency to anthropomorphize mechanical devices, and robots in particular tend to be seen as male (seriously, has anyone ever referred to R2-D2 as a ‘she’?). Still, it was a possibility.

Then I started poking around the Buy n Large website that Pixar has set up to help promote the film. In Wall•E’s universe, Buy n Large is apparently the company that makes Wall•E, along with a host of other products, and there’s a lot of cute in jokes and jabs at today’s tech companies hidden (and not so hidden — just check out the disclaimer text at the bottom of the home page) in the website.

On Jason Kottke’s recommendation, I bounced over to the ‘Robotics’ section of the site and started browsing through the four robot models available for the home (no permalink available, thanks to the all-Flash presentation: click ‘Robotics’ on the top menu bar, then choose ‘Robot Models’ from the left hand navigation). Here’s a brief rundown of the four models that Buy n Large offers:

• Sall•E: The Buy n Large Vaccubot. “Tired of cleaning the stairs and struggling to reach under your sofa to vacuum? With the BnL SALL•E Vaccubot, cleaning dirty carpets and drapes yourself can be a thing of the past.”

• Gar•E: The Buy n Large Yardbot. “The GAR•E is ready to handle the most time-consuming and difficult aspects of keeping a yeard in tip-top shape, from lawn trimming and hedge shaping to barbecue cleaning and maintenance.”

• Nanc•E: The Buy n Large Nannybot. “…with the new NANC•E Nannybot you can rest easily, knowing that every aspect of your child’s health and happiness has been addressed.”

• Wend•E: The Buy n Large Washbot. “With the WEND•E, washing, drying, folding, and putting away your clothes is a thing of the past.”

• And, of course, though it’s not listed on the site (or at least not this portion of the site), there’s Wall•E, the garbage collector.

Really, this isn’t even subtle. The traditional “women’s work” of cleaning, laundry, and taking care of the children is assigned to Sally, Wendy, and Nancy, while Gary goes out to do the yardwork and Wally picks up the garbage, typically “men’s chores.” These are stereotypes dating back decades — do we really need to be reinforcing them this obviously in today’s family films?

I also skimmed over the information collected on Wall•E’s Wikipedia page to get a better idea of what the movie’s about. Here’s John Lasseter’s summary of the film while presenting to Disney investors:

WALL-E is the story of the last little robot on Earth. He is a robot that his programming was to help clean up. You see, it’s set way in the future. Through consumerism, rampant, unchecked consumerism, the Earth was covered with trash. And to clean up, everyone had to leave Earth and set in place millions of these little robots that went around to clean up the trash and make Earth habitable again.

Well, the cleanup program failed with the exception of this one little robot and he’s left on Earth doing his duty all alone. But it’s not a story about science fiction. It’s a love story, because, you see, WALL-E falls in love with Eve, a robot from a probe that comes down to check on Earth, and she’s left there to check on and see how things are going and he absolutely falls in love with her.

So much for the possibility that, despite the name, Wall•E might be sexless. Once again, the main character in a Pixar film is male, and any female characters are secondary. Furthermore, it sounds like this Eve character isn’t one that will immediately appeal to most little girls. According to Andrew Stanton:

…WALL-E falls head over heals with a probot named EVE. Now, Wall-E’s feelings aren’t reciprocated because, well, she has no feelings. She’s a robot, cold and clinical. WALL-E is the one who has evolved over time and garnered feelings. So in the end, it’s gonna be WALL-E’s pursuit to win EVE’s heart, and his unique appreciation of life to become mankind’s last hope to rediscover its roots.

What’s been frustrating so far is simply that in many of Pixar’s prior films, there’s no particular reason why one or another of their characters couldn’t be female rather than male — would Ratatouille have been any less well done if he were a she? Would the rescue of the ant colony be less spectacular if Julia Louis-Dreyfus had voiced Flik against Dave Foley’s Prince Atta?

As I’ve said before, I don’t at all deny that, with few exceptions, Pixar’s films are incredibly well done — they’re technological marvels, they’re written as gorgeously as they are rendered, and they’re some of the only family-friendly fare that’s out there that has real heart and is genuinely worth watching. I’ve enjoyed most all of them (with Cars being a notable exception). However, it continues to be rather disappointing that they’ve yet to do anything with a strong, central female main character, and it’s doubly distressing that the available information on Wall•E is traditionalist and very obviously sexist.

This looks to be the third time running (following Cars and Ratatouille) that I’ll wait to rent Pixar’s latest, rather than sending any of my money their way via the theater.

Lastly, a bit of a disclaimer: to be honest, I believe misogyny to be an overly strong word for what’s happening here. However, when searching for synonyms for ‘sexist’ or ‘sexism’, it was only one of two words that would mimic Pixar’s ‘-e’ naming strategy, and while ‘bigotry’ is probably technically closer, it didn’t carry quite the emotional impact that I wanted for the title.

Addendum: Here’s something I dug out of my del.icio.us bookmarks — Washington Post guest columnist Jen Chaney raising some of the same questions I do.

Pixar has done it again. With “Ratatouille,” the studio has created another dazzling, clever, uplifting adventure, this time about a French rodent with a flair for food preparation. But Pixar also has done something else again: It’s delivered yet another kiddie-centric piece of entertainment with a male in the starring role.

I give Pixar much credit for breathing life into some gutsy, admirable females. Helen Parr of “The Incredibles” not only keeps her household in order, she can stretch her limbs to limits even the uber-flexible Madonna couldn’t reach. Sally Carrera in “Cars” is the spunky owner of her own business. And in “Ratatouille,” Colette (voiced by Janeane Garofalo) makes an impassioned speech about how, as the only woman working in the kitchen at the chi-chi Gusteau’s, she is tired of getting pushed around by all the men. She is femme, hear her roar.

But still, in the end, all of these women wind up playing love interest — and second fiddle — to the heroes.

Prairie and I went out to see the latest Potter movie last Sunday, and quite enjoyed it — in fact, this may be our current favorite (with number two battling for the prime spot in Prairie’s eyes). While many people have found it a bit rushed, I was impressed with how well they were able to compress such a long book into the span of just over a couple hours. To me, it felt fast, but not necessarily rushed. As Prairie and I have spent a couple days thinking back on it, we’re both pretty satisfied with this latest entry, and what few issues we have with the film fall pretty solidly into the realm of nitpicking, rather than actual issues.

Nitpicks (good things and bad, actually) under the cut (spoilers and all)…

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