WEEKEND

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REVIEW: Tron (1982, dir. Steven Lisberger)

As our old pal Joseph Campbell reminds us, there’s really only one saga for a hero to fulfill, so it’s nice every once in a while to see that saga done with visual panache. The incredibly inventive 1982 (children’s?) sci-fi adventure flick Tron certainly has that. The little Netflix synopsis for the film namedrops Star Wars and German Expressionism, both worthwhile comparisons.

A friend who watched with me commented on the opening scenes’ problematic pacing, and indeed the movie seems to start mid-stride, not unlike Buckaroo Banzai, without any (perhaps needed) exposition. We’re conveyed back and forth between “real world” gamers and programmers, and hyper-stylized costumed characters who, we have to figure out mostly for ourselves, are anthropomorphized programs. Right away, we’re introduced to the concept that programs who acknowledge their “Users” are treated as a religious minority in the computer world, one of the film’s many nice touches, a sort of Phildickian flourish that also sets up the divine origin of one of the film’s two heroes, programmer extraordinaire Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges).



Flynn is a User—in fact, the creator of the many videogames that serve as fatal ordeals for the beleaguered programs—who is unwittingly sucked into the digital world by the sinister Master Control Program, voiced by David Warner, who also portrays the MCP’s sinister but out-of-his-league User, Ed Dillinger. The remarkably young Bridges plays Flynn as an easygoing guy, though his unprecedented powers and nigh-invulnerability are very un-Dude. Bridges may have unwittingly created the character of the hacker-slacker, who crops up these days in everything from Live Free or Die Hard to Dollhouse.

The film’s other hero is the titular Tron (Bruce Boxleitner), a charmingly driven but ultimately fairly boring warrior of faith. Actually a security program, Tron is purposed by his User, Alan, to undermine the MCP, who is tyrannizing and terrorizing all the other programs.



The visuals of the movie might at first seem dated, but they have something special going for them. They capture the disturbing unreality of early videogame graphics—even the characters’ faces are the wrong color, limited to the palette of old PC displays. This is where the German Expressionism comparison comes in, as much of the blocky computer-world scenery and painterly character design complement the strivings of a hot-blooded actual human trapped in a cold digital universe.

Surprisingly, Wendy Carlos’ soundtrack is a bit disappointing. I actually found myself thinking during the movie’s climax, “This electronic score ain’t got nothin’ on Clockwork Orange,” and was then shocked to see Carlos’ name in the credits.

Tron’s not a perfect movie—its clumsy framing is a bit bothersome—but it’s a pioneering and fun bit of fantasy, and a surprisingly influential film (cf. Sin City, The Matrix).

The upcoming Tron sequel, Tron Legacy, now looks all the more exciting. A story set in a virtual world is the rare film it makes perfect sense to update, since better special effects are practically part of the plot. The only concern is that too much attention to updating the quality of the graphics might neglect the stylized beauty, but the brief trailer released at San Diego Comic Con looks promising.

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Hey everybody! Iiiiiit's Bob and David!

As I work my way through the show's fourth season, I'm falling in love again with Mr. Show with Bob and David. Cross and Odenkirk and their team of writers have an intuitive grasp of the sketch comedy format, shifting between gags with an almost disorienting effortlessness. On top of that, a number of their bits are just perfect.



Perhaps because they were originally broadcast on cable, they get away with more–one of the show's great strengths is its uncompromising sense of humor. Sometimes this carries the show too far into scatological humor, but unlike something like Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job!, which revels in absurd displays of bodily fluid, Mr. Show knows how to deliver a good poop joke or two, without high concept. But they're no strangers to high-concept, either, and about sixty percent of what they do is deft media parody.



I've had a surprisingly hard time convincing other people of the show's merits, and after a long hiatus following my viewings of the first three seasons, I had started to wonder if I had overrated them. But no, they're damn good. They remind me why sketch comedy is such a potent format, a way to meld disparate ideas into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. (In that way, sketch shows are a big influence on The Simpsons.) I feel compelled to revisit Flying Circus and Tim and Eric, as well as spend some time on The State and Kids in the Hall. Life would be way better if SNL was this good. But then maybe it would just get canceled.

Warning: contains a bit of violence

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REVIEW: Funny Games (2007, dir. Michael Haneke)

Perhaps I was over-prepared for Funny Games. When Michael Haneke’s English-language remake of his own 1997 film first hit theaters, I read a review—I can’t recall where—that made me simultaneously terrified and curious to see it. It sounded like a fascinating formal experiment, but something I might not have the stomach to sit through. A post on Stacie Ponder’s Final Girl blog made me rethink this hesitation, since she indicated that the film did most of its damage off-screen. I became increasingly interested as I read more about Haneke’s body of work. Ultimately, Haneke’s original Austrian version sat on my Netflix queue for some time, until I came across the English version last night on HBO. I came in at about the halfway point, but I was riveted for the remainder of the movie and promptly TiVo’d the whole thing so I could watch the beginning of it right away.

There is something to be said for a movie that grabs you and shakes you even after its been relentlessly spoiled by multiple reviews and viewed out of sequence. The film details the brutal torment of a family at the hands of two young men, played by Michael Pitt and Brady Corbet. Michael Pitt’s character, variously referred to as Paul, Jerry and Butt-Head, repeatedly breaks the fourth wall and interfaces with the audience, who are as much his prisoners as the defenseless family. Naomi Watts and Tim Roth give moving performances as two people destroyed by tragedy, but as expected and feared, the real star of the movie is, well, the movie itself.

Pitt and Corbet are cartoon caricatures of serial killers, even going so far as to title themselves after the jaded perpetual observers Beavis and Butt-Head. They’re colder and less specifically satirical than American Psycho’s Patrick Bateman; they are actually most reminiscent of Mister Croup and Mister Vandemar, the archetypal bogeymen from Neil Gaiman’s fantasy novel Neverwhere. They are destroying people’s lives out of an adolescent impulse, as well as a repeatedly declared desire to “entertain.” Who, exactly, do they wish to entertain? That would be you, puny viewer. The movie plays constantly with the ethical problem of finding entertainment in the torture of innocent people.

The film’s heavy-handedness could be debated endlessly, but the film gets a couple things very right. For one, it’s scarier than a lot of horror films, favoring pacing over splatter. Long, tense shots with maybe one or two points of movement dominate the middle part of the film, and multiple acts of cruelty are synthesized through off-camera sounds of anguish. Also, it has a mightily unsettling opening sequence, where a cheerful, entirely un-ominous family car ride featuring a (funny?) game of Guess What Opera We’re Listening To is unceremoniously torn asunder by a maddening burst of shrieky music by John Zorn’s Naked City ensemble. Here's the scene:



It’s hard to imagine sitting through the original version of the film anytime soon, but now I’ve broken through to the world of Haneke, I’ll probably seek out Caché and 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. Funny Games is a blistering style piece, whether or not you’re on board with its didactic element.

Image source: Mark O'Sullivan

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A Resolution Met (kind of)

At the end of last semester, I set myself a goal of watching at least fifty movies this summer. I failed to keep a list of any kind during the summer, and just tried to piece one together tonight from my and my dad's Netflix histories, saved movie tickets and memory. It looks like I've met my goal, and, if I count movies I've seen before, far exceeded it. Below the jump is the list I've compiled so far, in alphabetical order. I'll add films as I remember them. Italics denote movies I'd previously seen before May 19, 2009.

Alien
Amélie
American Casino
Away We Go
The Ballad of Cable Hogue
Beetlejuice
The Big Lebowski
Brick
The Brothers Bloom
The City of Lost Children
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Double Indemnity
Drag Me to Hell
Elevator to the Gallows
The Fifth Element
(500) Days of Summer (x2)
Ghost Town
The Godfather, Part II
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Holiday
The Hurt Locker
Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted
Inglourious Basterds
Inherit the Wind
Interface
La Jetée
The Limits of Control
Magical Mystery Tour
The Mask
Michael Clayton
Millennium Actress
Moon
My Dinner with Andre
Naked
Naked Lunch
The Night of the Hunter
North by Northwest
Oldboy
Paris, Texas
Performance
Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea
Raising Arizona
Rescue Dawn
Revenge of a Kabuki Actor [a.k.a. An Actor’s Revenge]
RiffTrax Live: Plan 9 from Outer Space
The Room
Sans Soleil
The Saragossa Manuscript
The Shining
Sin Nombre
16 Blocks
Spaceballs
Stand By Me
Star Trek [2009]
Sullivan’s Travels
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
The Thief of Bagdad [1940]
Thirst
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
El Topo
The Toxic Avenger
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Trees Lounge
12 Angry Men
Vertigo
Videodrome
The Visitor
Waltz with Bashir
War, Inc.
Whatever Works
Where’s Poppa?
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

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Daily Cal Blitz

So, by virtue of being one of the few writers in town over the past few weeks, I have four pieces being published by the Daily Californian this week (only three of them in the print edition).

REVIEW: "Happy Days" at Cal Shakes

REVIEW: Inglourious Basterds (dir. Quentin Tarantino)

REVIEW: American Casino (dir. Leslie Cockburn)

REVIEW: Watch Me Fall by Jay Reatard

I haven't decided whether I'll make posting articles here a habit - probably not, since I could see it getting irritating fast. Don't really know what this blog is for yet, so we'll see.

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Shows

This is going to be a good season for live shows.

There's the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival on October 2-4, with Billy Bragg, Neko Case, Robyn Hitchcock, John Prine, Gillian Welch, Nick Lowe, the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, Amadou & Mariam, Guy Clark, Okkervil River, and some other people. And it's free! Gratis!

Then fast-forward to November. I have tickets for Pixies at Fox Theatre in Oakland on November 9, who I missed on their first couple reunion tours. Then, November 14, Mountain Goats with . . . wait for it . . . Final Fantasy!!!!! One word: yes.

Let's hope he does this:


If you've wandered across this blog and have any suggestions for good shows in the Bay Area over the next several months, do tell.

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