Define Dancing

 

I thought I would start sharing my favorite movie scenes. I’ll begin with some cinematic magic, the Define Dancing scene from Disney Pixar’s Wall-e. Visually inspiring, this waltz through space is an achievement in both aesthetics and emotion. I challenge you not to smile through this entire clip. There is more meaning in these three minutes of animation than there is in every moronic MTV reality show combined. The lack of developed dialogue by the two protagonists is wonderfully refreshing. The contrast between a filthy abandoned earth and the beautiful black frontier of space is stark but pleasant. Thinking of the plot and lack of dialogue I am reminded of a symphony, prancing around a central tune with intent. In fact, I would compare it directly to Fantasia, which is another visually inspiring Disney creation. Walt Disney was obsessed with Fantasia –he worked tirelessly within his studio for years to direct a film of insurmountable significance, both visually and musically. I think Wall-e does Walt Disney justice –if Walt made a movie today, it would look eerily similar to Wall-e. The spunky little robot is like the original Mickey Mouse. John Wayne would crack a smile for him. Wall-e uses a fire extinguisher to propel himself through space so he can “dance” with his lady-in-red, Eve. When they hugged I could have cried. When she gives him a little static shock he seizes up and tumbles over backward like a little boy fainting from his first kiss. Inexplicably, non-human characters are always more human than anyone I know. They have pure emotion and genuine personalities. Wall-e is like a little kid on Christmas in this scene, but at times he becomes exceedingly lonely and even nostalgic. A nostalgic robot! How delightful. Meanwhile, the captain becomes fascinated with earthly subjects and two passengers discover human contact; two seemingly unrelated but perfectly complementary scenes. The passengers look out on Eve and Wall-e performing a magnificent ballet through space. The choreography is astounding, and it is highlighted as the captain utters two words: define dancing. I think I understood then, that I was watching them dance with each other like animals do. Like puppies playing for the first time.   I am simply unable to describe the pure emotion and pristine beauty of this scene. It has to be the most heartwarming moment in Hollywood.

Just Google It!

            I discovered this artwork in my English 111 class in a discussion about rhetoric. Essentially the argument was that if Einstein was alive today, he would be driven into alcoholism by his frustration over the availability of information because of Google. I think graffiti is now the purest form of art, when done properly. Music is individual, but every band makes decisions about what their audience will like best because, well, that’s what sells records (or downloads from iTunes). Modern art is crap in my mind; it requires no skill. It really is just a contest to determine which artist can piss more people off. Contemporary art is dead, since most people just recreate pre-existing classics from Monet or da Vinci.  However, graffiti is meant to please no one except the artist. It exists to critique society or to pay respect to those who deserve it, but it is never created to be sold, and that makes all the difference.  Unfortunately, graffiti is often the work of misguided ruffians with nothing better to do than spray-paint explicit language on a highway overpass. I fully support the illegality of such action, but if there was a way to graffiti while abiding by certain laws, I think that we would see a burst of thoughtful and artistic youth creating art with meaning.  The greatest example must be the Berlin Wall. Sections of the Wall still standing are covered in extremely relevant graffiti, criticizing (and praising) religion, government, and society in general. The wall is the largest piece of artwork with any credibility. So, with my approval of certain graffiti explained, I return to Einstein. This wall is illustrated with Einstein clearly defeated, drinking straight from a liquor bottle. The caption reads, “Just Google It.” Google is the single most visited search engine in the world, processing over one billion searches per day. Google makes information freely accessible to pretty much anyone. And it’s fast –in the range of 25.3 billion results found in one fifth of a second. Google is perhaps the greatest thing in the world. It makes essentially all of the information published searchable to anyone. It is the largest collection of factual information in history. To criticize it would be stupid, since it does exactly what I want whenever I want it. I don’t necessarily agree with the message –that Einstein would be driven to such a state by Google –because the accessibility of information would likely excite him. I think he would find such a wealth of information useful and constructive to the new minds and ideas of today. That aside, I think this piece is astoundingly insightful, wonderfully original, and carefully critical. I quite like it.  

Some Words

This post acknowledges words about which I feel strongly. Let’s start with my favorite word phrase in the English language, to fall asleep. It’s a lovely little verb. It’s wonderfully succinct. It describes probably the most intimate moment of your day: when you finally lie down and rest your mind. You are defenseless, unthinking, and the wall between your subconscious and conscious is at its thinnest. It is within the last waking minutes of the day that many people have their greatest ideas. Stephen Hawking has had countless epiphanies about the universe just before falling asleep. No one shares your thoughts with you before you fall asleep. You are perfectly entranced within your own mind. You let your thoughts carry you away from every harsh reality and unfortunate truth in your life. It is undoubtedly my favorite time of the day. The verb fall asleep captures this so eloquently I have trouble not telling everyone how I feel about it. You are truly falling into unconsciousness; you don’t push yourself, you don’t put forth any effort, and you have nothing important to think about. In fact, if you do any of those things, you are unlikely to reach sleep with any effectiveness. Sleep itself is a lovely verb, noun, and adjective base. When you combine it with the verb fall, however, it becomes exponentially more meaningful. I think it is the most intimate, beautiful, and pure verb we have created thus far in English.

The Social Network

    David Fincher’s The Social Network is a masterpiece. Too often we are blessed with a director who manages only one great film. Once in a very great while, however, there comes a director with a style all his own who creates art… repeatedly. David Fincher is one such director. He has given us legendary and dark films such as Fight Club and Se7en. I’m hoping his next film is just as good as his last.

                The Social Network is a film that seems long overdue to me. Facebook is perhaps the largest phenomenon on Earth right now, with 750 million active users. For reference, that is 50% larger than the entire European Union’s population. Nearly one half of United States citizens have a registered Facebook account, which means there are twice as many users of the site in the US alone than there are people in the United Kingdom. There have been approximately 10,590,687 movies about the U.K. and just one about Facebook. But that one movie makes up for all those years without one. Jesse Eisenberg takes his place as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, playing him with a wonderful cynicism. Justin Timberlake plays Napster creator Sean Parker, an arrogant dirtbag that runs Facebook’s co-founder and CFO Eduardo Saverin out of the company. The aforementioned CFO Eduardo is played by actor Andrew Garfield. Disney Channel star Brenda Song makes a surprising appearance as Eduardo’s unbelievably sexy (and batshit crazy) girlfriend Christy. With the exception of Sean Parker (Timberlake), all of the above attend Harvard in the fall of 2003. The movie begins with a visually relaxing shot of Zuckerberg and his then-girlfriend Erica drinking casually in a bar. Mark is spewing facts and thoughts relentlessly, rarely pausing, even to answer a question. He changes subjects randomly and confuses Erica constantly. This is my first impression of Zuckerberg, and immediately we can see that he is brutally intelligent and has a pretty restless mind. He strikes me as a character greatly influenced by James Joyce and his stream of consciousness. After a few ill-placed comments, his girlfriend dumps him and he jogs home through Harvard.

Mark gets dumped because he's "an asshole."

            This was my favorite part. Barely five minutes into the movie, Mark is being a total jerk and you can see his cold disregard for other people. On his run home, an eerily dark piano song plays and we see most of Harvard. Upon arriving at his dorm, Zuckerberg starts blogging rudely about Erica to make him feel better. Eventually he stumbles upon the idea to compare female undergrads at Harvard to one another online by hacking their photos from the university’s dorm “facebooks.”  Mark’s site eventually reaches most of the student body and the intense traffic (at 4 AM, mind you) crashes Harvard’s network. When called in front of the administrative board, Zuckerberg is apologetic in a calculated way, but obviously not sincere. He is also clearly proud of himself. The poor kid is placed under academic probation for six months. The middle of the movie is filled with Zuckerberg inventing theFacebook, dropping out of Harvard, meeting new partners for the site, and finally being sued twice. The plaintiffs are three Harvard students, Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, who claim that Mark stole their idea for theFacebook, and is former best friend and business partner Mr. Eduardo Saverin.

One of the Winklevoss twins in court against Mark.

              Essentially this is one big case of intellectual property theft. Together, Mark and Sean Parker write Eduardo out of the company (by diluting his shares within the company to practically nothing). Eduardo obviously doesn’t take this news well. Instead he charges Mark’s workspace and tears him a new one. His display of raw emotion is the best in the film. He is hurt, distraught, angry beyond words, and vengeful. Mark, in response, is calm, collected, and seemingly apathetic. Throughout the entire movie, Mark’s responses to emotion from others are identical. Despite facing serious anger, aggression, and hatred, Mark just sits there, even commenting on the weather in response.

Eisenberg and Garfield as former best friends Mark and Eduardo.

         The emotional diversity of the characters is outstanding.  I’m pretty sure Mark is the most introverted person I’ve ever seen. Every little detail is internalized. Nothing upsets him, and he rarely shows his own true emotion (except from perhaps glimpses of excitement over moments of power over others).  He comes across as highly apathetic, but in reality he is emotionally naïve and hides behind a false ego. Most of us can relate to this in some way, because his attitude is essentially human nature in society, only exaggerated greatly. It is his relevance to the audience that makes us like him at all. Despite being intelligent and inventing this website, he really only does one thing well: provoke and instigate others. Ordinarily this would make such a person the film’s natural antagonist (being as he antagonizes others). Here, however, he is the obvious protagonist, because we journey with him through intense emotional turmoil and loss.

Mark (Eisenberg) observes and calculates.

                Mark’s utter complexity is the movie’s triumph. His character ranks among my favorites in all of filmdom. He is charismatic, brutal, intelligent, witty, arrogant, quirky, devilish, relevant, inventive, confused, omniscient, mysterious, wonderful, innocent, informal, honest, deceitful, perfect, imperfect, apathetic, emotional, frustrated, calculating, cold, excitable, merciless, introverted, independent, dependent, welcoming, forgetful, awkward, comfortable, careful, careless, rational, and condescending. He is everything a college student and entrepreneur should be, and everything I want to be.

                Official Redrew: five out of five stars. A wonderfully refreshing movie about the most relevant topic on earth that deserves the recognition it has garnered. Jesse Eisenberg is flawless. Direction and Writing are equally impressive. My Favorite movie.

The Green Lantern

Ryan Reynolds as the Green Lantern

I was seriously excited for the next installment of DC Comics’ superhero series: the Green Lantern. I was also seriously disappointed in it. The plot of any superhero movie is guaranteed to be outlandish –even the more scientifically plausible films such as Iron Man and Batman. That’s why they are called “super,” which means above, greater, or beyond (in this case, reality and human ability). This movie, however, was absurd. I can handle biological research gone awry, or your average Joe developing superhuman abilities from government projects attempting to create super-soldiers. In fact, Iron Man and Captain America: the First Avenger are my favorite superhero films (they are both Marvel productions, by the way).The Green Lantern, directed by Mr. Martin Campbell, is just dumb. It has no intelligence. It probably appeals to children fewer than 12 years old, which is a shame, because the target audience is much older and smarter. There is one moment of comedy: when someone tells Hal Jordan (played by Ryan Reynolds) to watch his back, he responds coolly, “That’s impossible.” Of course everyone loves Ryan Reynolds. He is sweet, hilarious, and, in general, he is the man. He is not the issue with this movie; He was actually the only aspect I liked at all. The problem was Blake Lively’s despicable effort. The problem was the giant black cloud Parallax, the essence of fear. It was the dying purple alien. It was the travel of innumerable light years in mere seconds. It was the fact that a ring could literally harness willpower. There are 3,600 sectors of this Green Lantern universe that hold life, and our advanced human race has failed to find one extra-terrestrial life form? But those things could be overlooked. What really chaps my ass is when a scientist of no academic significance named Hector, (who has minimal qualifications within an imaginary field of study) is chosen by the government to study the dead Abin Sur (the purple alien), when some of the “fear” from Parallax that killed Abin latches itself to a cut on Hector and advances his cranium several sizes. I saw this (see below) and nearly walked out.

This is our villain all done up!

The rest of the film is Ryan Reynolds trying to fight these two antagonists with the Green Lantern and Power Ring. Our beloved evil doctor has apparently developed enough brain power to sufficiently master telekinesis within days. Somehow he puts up quite a fight for Hal Jordan, which I find insulting. The Power Ring supposedly masters willpower, thus its abilities are, for all intents and purposes, unlimited. And yet, Mr. Reynolds is unable to defeat this disproportionate scientist with subpar telekinesis. Outstanding! This weapon should be exponentially more powerful than even superman, but Hal just can’t seem to kill this ass-clown. He should be equaled only by Dr. Manhattan, master of the universe, capable of bending its laws to his will. Alas, no such rationality exists within this movie. Instead, in the end, he flies to the sun, hoping to draw Parallax near enough to be pulled in by the sun’s gravity (even though this black cloud has no discernible mass).Fortunately, at the last second, Hal conjures two jet fighters (presumably because he is the best pilot in history or whatever) to prevent him from being sucked into and destroyed by the sun. Subsequently, Parallax is pulled in, and Hal is saved by his fellow Green Lantern Corps buddies who had abandoned him earlier in the film. How touching. Then, at the very end, the Green Lantern Commander places a yellow ring of fear on his finger, indicating his journey to evil is well on its way. Can you say sequel??? Please don’t. The only justice I felt delivered was the film’s performance at the box office: it grossed roughly $206 million worldwide, or just more than Lethal Weapon 2. I find that pretty damn impressive, and I think most would agree. However, in considering its budget of an estimated $200 million, a $6 million profit is abysmal.  In contrast, James Cameron’s Avatar, the highest grossing film of all time, used an eerily similar budget to produce a spectacular movie and…wait for it… over 2.5 BILLION dollars in profit. Better luck next time, DC Comics. 

Ryan graces the cover of Entertainment Weekly

The Green Lantern was an impossible movie with terrible acting, concepts, and effects. The only part I liked was Ryan Reynolds. And Blake Lively is hot as hell. Official Redrew: one half-star (out of five).

Inglourious Basterds

I’d like to get this out of the way: I hate Quentin Tarantino. He is disgusting. His style is credited as “original” and “creative.” But that is garbage; he is a sadist. He loves pain. He loves others to feel pain. He loves his actors to be in pain. He loves the audience to be in pain, and he loves his editors to be in pain. He combines themes of spaghetti westerns and torture porn-style gore. Tarantino is a child with an assault rifle. His non-linear storylines are confusing and outlandish. He wants to be difficult. He wants you to think to yourself: “Jesus that just doesn’t seem right.” Kill Bill 1 and 2 were appalling. Terrible acting, poor special effects, and absurd storylines filled the movie. And the worst part is that it is all on purpose. His movies represent the kid in school who feigns apathy and performs poorly on purpose to seem cool, but is really just terrified that if he tries, he might fail. Tarantino is that kid. He makes jokes and calls them movies. Oh, and he helped give us the movie Hostel.

                Tarantino’s smug attitude and odd face, however, are not why I am writing. I am writing to praise the movie Inglourious Basterds. Immediately my computer (an HP, because Macs are for idiots) alerts me of something: both words in the title are misspelled –yet another example of his smugness. Anyway, this movie was phenomenal. You can’t argue that. I don’t care if the Second World War has been made into 1,000 mediocre films; this is a good one. The acting is perfect. The cast is outstanding. The plot is intriguing (not to mention beautifully fictional). The music was complimentary and compelling, but not overpowering. I noticed each song as it played because it was good. They were unique and simple. The title theme, Rabbia e Tarantella, was stuck in my head for hours after the movie (in a good way). But the shining star was David Bowie’s Cat People. It starts with the climax of the film: the premier of a Nazi propaganda film based upon Fredrick Zoller’s encounter with Allied troops. We see her in a stunning red dress, which is also the color of the Swastika flags throughout the theater. Any other director would have used dark, forboding music to alert the viewer of the death and suffering; Tarantino smartly uses David Bowie’s signature sound for an extraordinary effect.

                To the actors: astonishing work gentlemen. I’m not being sexist; I just think of the TWO women who appeared in the entire movie as suboptimal and relatively unimportant. This is in spite of the fact that Shoshanna is the ostensible protagonist of the story.  Colonel Hans Landa. This is one of the greatest characters ever conceived. The Jew Hunter. Playing him requires perversion, psychosis, likability, intelligence, eloquence, appropriate appearance, and confidence. And the actor must be all of the above simultaneously. Surely no such actor exists, right? Wrong. Native Austrian Christoph Waltz is beautiful as Landa. But everyone knows that since he won the Academy Award for best supporting actor in Basterds. His tone twists and turns like a roller coaster. His wording is intelligent and bold. He is frank in his demands, but somehow stretches simple sentences into entire monologues that are fun to watch, not painful. He is cruel, foul, and simply psychotic. And yet, I find myself liking him. In the midst of his evil, he is a protagonist. He is wildly selfish. He plays for the winners, and it doesn’t matter to him who that is. Make no mistake; he does not end the war for the greater good or for the fame. Instead he ends it for himself. He knows Germany is going to lose, and he ends the war in Europe for his own benefit. He somehow makes eating terrifying. Brilliant! Something so innocent and necessary is twisted beyond recognition. He makes drinking a glass of milk frightening. And when he eats a strudel it is unlike any scene in Hollywood. You can feel the tension in the situation. You can see him smiling to himself. He tortures her with his presence and dialogue. He lets mystery tear Shoshanna apart. Finally, after he excuses himself, she breaks down sobbing. What an outstanding performance. Landa reminds me of one person in particular: Hannibal Lector. He is calculating, brilliant, psychotic, and as strange as mustard ice cream. But I love him. When he is off-screen I wonder where he is. He becomes giddy with excitement, bouncing and smiling like a child near the end of the movie. He is deadly serious and surprisingly self conscious when checking his English. He is informal yet dangerously polite. He laughs like a hyena, a pretty big sign that he is nuts. And at the end, we see our American protagonist (played by Brad Pitt), an Army officer, carve a Swastika into Landa’s head to remind him of his crimes. And do you know what? I felt sorry for the Colonel. I hated Brad Pitt for that. Cristoph Waltz’s performance had more levels than Burj Khalifa. I commend him. Now we move on to the Basterds: A lovable gang of hoodlums from all over the U.S. that savagely beat and torture members of the Wehrmacht. Full grown men behaving like animals. And that is exactly what they needed to be. America needed a symbol that would strike fear into German hearts, and they were it. Everyone was amazing, but Michael Fassbender stood out most. His distinguished service to the British army was cut short by a group of Americans (and one German traitor) trying to murder every German soldier possible. He is, first and foremost, a gentleman. He is polite, loyal to his country, and I assume he is quite chivalrous. And, in his finest moment, he takes part in the most suspenseful scene: the bar standoff. I have seldom seen such an intimate scene. We see each German speaking member of the Basterds lose their lives in a chilling gunfight. In his last moments Fassbender’s character “goes out speaking the Kings.” What a model Brit.

                An interesting movie with the greatest cast I’ve ever seen. Tarantino might not be as much of an idiot as I thought. Official Redrew: five out of five stars.  

What it's about

Hey everyone (which I know is just me, but I’ll write as if someone visits my page) my name is Andrew. I am a student at Miami University (not the University of Miami). I am now an adult. I will essentially be reviewing things, hence: let’s redrew. I love movies, art, books, magazines, music, and just about anything else. You’ll see that I’m pretty critical and strongly opinionated, especially when it comes to people’s behavior.
I hope you enjoy!