*Yawns*
Before I peel myself off my chair and shuffle off to bed, I figured I'd pop up in ye old journal and post something post-able.
Went back to Camelview today and saw Half Nelson. Aside from Brick, Half Nelson is shaping up to be in my top 3 best indie films of the year. I was leary at first, because what little press there is for the film keeps harping on and on about Ryan Gosling's "incredible", "Oscar-caliber" performance. Whenever critics start prose-humping actors, I get nervous. I've been burned by way too many "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GIVE ME AN ACADEMY AWARD" performances. Shit, just watching the trailer for All The King's Men and listening to Sean Penn's spittle-laced 2-D southern accent almost made me epileptic. I've always viewed great acting as a matter of extremes: either one is so subtle and low-key it seems as though they are hardly acting at all, or you take it so far over the top it becomes crazed pop art. In spite of my misgivings, I have to give critics props for making the right call: Gosling is phenomenal in this movie.
Half Nelson's premise is simple: take the hoary old "Dangerous Minds" premise and turn it on its ear. Classic done-to-death formula: earnest white teacher goes to an underfunded inner city school and teaches black children to stop being hoodlums and start being Bob Dylan fans/poetry aficionados/Capoiera masters. Along the way, our earnest young teacher must contend with a stodgy school board that doesn't understand their maverick ways, fellow teachers numbed with apathy, and the worry that one of their charges will be killed/become pregnant/deal drugs/make a silly ass mix tape of Capoeira music and then get killed (ah, Only The Strong; like Stand And Deliver, only with 100% more cheese and a liberal sprinkling of kicks throughout the narrative). This shit is so played out they made Jon Lovitz do a parody film of it, and who can forget the gritty-street realism and urban gravitas of Weird Al's "Amish Paradise"? The reason why Half Nelson is great is it takes that formula, sets up those expectations, and promptly sidesteps them.
Gosling's character Mr. Dunne is a history teacher who doesn't play by the curriculum (so far, textbook storytelling). Mr. Dunne is also a basehead. Mr. Dunne is barely functional in social situations outside of the class room. Dunne's character is great in that it takes the fresh-faced idealists of other, lesser school-of-hard-knocks and makes him a fuckup. Hooked on coke, he's an idealist who wants to change the system from within, yet is so self-destructive that he can barely stay conscious during family dinners and torpedoes every relationship with a woman he gets into. The one scene of the film that has burned itself into my brain is early on when Dunne, after snorting a vial of coke, has been dancing with two chicks he's trying to pick up at a bar. They're hanging out in a hallway, the girls sweaty and eager to get back to dancing, Dunne telling them he's a teacher and then going off on a rant about how he hopes he can change the minds of his students, have an impact, do something meaningful, etc. The girls look at him with a "shut up and dance" glare of casual dismissal. I can relate strongly to that scene: here he is in the middle of a euphoric, bacchanalian situation, and he gets hung up on politics and philosophy.
The film deals with Dunne's interactions with one of his students, Rudie (I believe that is her character's name, my memory is getting a bit hazy). Rudie has a troubled past: a family member in prison, mom always at work, she hangs out with Frank, a drug dealer that feeds her family cash. This is the part of the film that could of failed miserably if they succumbed to cliche. Luckily, Nelson works because the characters don't act the way we want or expect them to. Frank the drug dealer might be the friendliest character in the film, even if he is dealing rock and dope. When Dunne inevitably tries to help Rudie stay on the straight and narrow path, rather than looking righteous and upstanding like other teachers in other films, he looks hypocritical and lost, a man meddling in affairs he just doesn't understand. While all this sounds rather heavy, what makes the film a joy to watch is that is laced with dry humor, and all the characters are played with such charisma and conviction that it is a pleasure to watch them moving around on screen, talking to each other. They have the familiarity of old friends. Plus: the film soundtrack is excellent.
Now for my beef: goddammit, I hate shaky and fuzzy camera-work. If I were a director and my camera-man showed me footage that was jittering about like a 12 year old hopped on up 3 cans of Red Bull, I'd slap the fuck out of him and scream "Steady the shot, keep it steady like a picture frame". I can understand the aesthetic reasons for the shaky camera-work and fuzziness in Half Nelson: the main character is a junkie, the occasionally hazy, shaky imagery is a reflection of his inner state, blah blah blah. What it boils down to is that it doesn't look that good. Its too grainy and indistinct. When I watch a film, I want bold colors. If the film is dark, I want a bold absence of colors. I like grime and grit and seediness if I can see it clearly; when its shown through a shaky, fuzzy POV, it does nothing for me. Now, the whole film isn't like this, so I'm not pointing out this irksome detail as a reason for not seeing it (and you really should; good cinema like this needs every cent it can get); it just happens enough time to make me feel mildly annoyed.
So yeah, Half Nelson was ggggggggrrrrrrrrreattt (Tony The Tiger as high-brow film critic). I've been juggling my reading needs between Only Revolutions (Danielewski is a genius, but I can't read more than 20 pages of that book without needing to take a breather) and Max Brooks' World War Z. I'm loving World War Z. The idea of writing an oral history about a zombie invasion, a decade after it ended with survivors who lived through it throughout the globe, is a great one (and I feel deeply jealous that I didn't think of it first). The writing is very good, the characters are interesting (the way the book is written, each chapter is the recollection of one character in a different part of the world; once the chapter ends, the character is never seen again), and a lot of Brooks' ideas about a zombie attack on society and our response to it are quite innovative (ex: one character explains the simultaneous manifestation of zombies across the globe as the result of infected donated organs being implanted in unsuspecting victims). My only complaint so far is that one chapter of the book just felt wrong: it involved the testimony of an ex-CEO of a pharmacetuical company, hiding out in the wilderness and gloating over his selling a fake zombie vaccine to the public during the early days of the zombie war. Now I can believe someone can do something so cold-blooded; that isn't unbelievable. Problem is Brooks writes the guy as Snidely Whiplash: he fucking GIGGLES during his recollections. Its just lazy writing: oooh, Big Business is Evil. It would have been more interesting if the guy felt some guilt, or if he was extremely defensive and denying all charges, or best of all, doped up on anti-depressants that his own company used to produce. Great character idea, botched execution. Aside from that, everything else flows quite nicely.
And now I'm going to bed, because I must go to work at noon and I need my minimum 6 hours to function.
-Ash
Before I peel myself off my chair and shuffle off to bed, I figured I'd pop up in ye old journal and post something post-able.
Went back to Camelview today and saw Half Nelson. Aside from Brick, Half Nelson is shaping up to be in my top 3 best indie films of the year. I was leary at first, because what little press there is for the film keeps harping on and on about Ryan Gosling's "incredible", "Oscar-caliber" performance. Whenever critics start prose-humping actors, I get nervous. I've been burned by way too many "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GIVE ME AN ACADEMY AWARD" performances. Shit, just watching the trailer for All The King's Men and listening to Sean Penn's spittle-laced 2-D southern accent almost made me epileptic. I've always viewed great acting as a matter of extremes: either one is so subtle and low-key it seems as though they are hardly acting at all, or you take it so far over the top it becomes crazed pop art. In spite of my misgivings, I have to give critics props for making the right call: Gosling is phenomenal in this movie.
Half Nelson's premise is simple: take the hoary old "Dangerous Minds" premise and turn it on its ear. Classic done-to-death formula: earnest white teacher goes to an underfunded inner city school and teaches black children to stop being hoodlums and start being Bob Dylan fans/poetry aficionados/Capoiera masters. Along the way, our earnest young teacher must contend with a stodgy school board that doesn't understand their maverick ways, fellow teachers numbed with apathy, and the worry that one of their charges will be killed/become pregnant/deal drugs/make a silly ass mix tape of Capoeira music and then get killed (ah, Only The Strong; like Stand And Deliver, only with 100% more cheese and a liberal sprinkling of kicks throughout the narrative). This shit is so played out they made Jon Lovitz do a parody film of it, and who can forget the gritty-street realism and urban gravitas of Weird Al's "Amish Paradise"? The reason why Half Nelson is great is it takes that formula, sets up those expectations, and promptly sidesteps them.
Gosling's character Mr. Dunne is a history teacher who doesn't play by the curriculum (so far, textbook storytelling). Mr. Dunne is also a basehead. Mr. Dunne is barely functional in social situations outside of the class room. Dunne's character is great in that it takes the fresh-faced idealists of other, lesser school-of-hard-knocks and makes him a fuckup. Hooked on coke, he's an idealist who wants to change the system from within, yet is so self-destructive that he can barely stay conscious during family dinners and torpedoes every relationship with a woman he gets into. The one scene of the film that has burned itself into my brain is early on when Dunne, after snorting a vial of coke, has been dancing with two chicks he's trying to pick up at a bar. They're hanging out in a hallway, the girls sweaty and eager to get back to dancing, Dunne telling them he's a teacher and then going off on a rant about how he hopes he can change the minds of his students, have an impact, do something meaningful, etc. The girls look at him with a "shut up and dance" glare of casual dismissal. I can relate strongly to that scene: here he is in the middle of a euphoric, bacchanalian situation, and he gets hung up on politics and philosophy.
The film deals with Dunne's interactions with one of his students, Rudie (I believe that is her character's name, my memory is getting a bit hazy). Rudie has a troubled past: a family member in prison, mom always at work, she hangs out with Frank, a drug dealer that feeds her family cash. This is the part of the film that could of failed miserably if they succumbed to cliche. Luckily, Nelson works because the characters don't act the way we want or expect them to. Frank the drug dealer might be the friendliest character in the film, even if he is dealing rock and dope. When Dunne inevitably tries to help Rudie stay on the straight and narrow path, rather than looking righteous and upstanding like other teachers in other films, he looks hypocritical and lost, a man meddling in affairs he just doesn't understand. While all this sounds rather heavy, what makes the film a joy to watch is that is laced with dry humor, and all the characters are played with such charisma and conviction that it is a pleasure to watch them moving around on screen, talking to each other. They have the familiarity of old friends. Plus: the film soundtrack is excellent.
Now for my beef: goddammit, I hate shaky and fuzzy camera-work. If I were a director and my camera-man showed me footage that was jittering about like a 12 year old hopped on up 3 cans of Red Bull, I'd slap the fuck out of him and scream "Steady the shot, keep it steady like a picture frame". I can understand the aesthetic reasons for the shaky camera-work and fuzziness in Half Nelson: the main character is a junkie, the occasionally hazy, shaky imagery is a reflection of his inner state, blah blah blah. What it boils down to is that it doesn't look that good. Its too grainy and indistinct. When I watch a film, I want bold colors. If the film is dark, I want a bold absence of colors. I like grime and grit and seediness if I can see it clearly; when its shown through a shaky, fuzzy POV, it does nothing for me. Now, the whole film isn't like this, so I'm not pointing out this irksome detail as a reason for not seeing it (and you really should; good cinema like this needs every cent it can get); it just happens enough time to make me feel mildly annoyed.
So yeah, Half Nelson was ggggggggrrrrrrrrreattt (Tony The Tiger as high-brow film critic). I've been juggling my reading needs between Only Revolutions (Danielewski is a genius, but I can't read more than 20 pages of that book without needing to take a breather) and Max Brooks' World War Z. I'm loving World War Z. The idea of writing an oral history about a zombie invasion, a decade after it ended with survivors who lived through it throughout the globe, is a great one (and I feel deeply jealous that I didn't think of it first). The writing is very good, the characters are interesting (the way the book is written, each chapter is the recollection of one character in a different part of the world; once the chapter ends, the character is never seen again), and a lot of Brooks' ideas about a zombie attack on society and our response to it are quite innovative (ex: one character explains the simultaneous manifestation of zombies across the globe as the result of infected donated organs being implanted in unsuspecting victims). My only complaint so far is that one chapter of the book just felt wrong: it involved the testimony of an ex-CEO of a pharmacetuical company, hiding out in the wilderness and gloating over his selling a fake zombie vaccine to the public during the early days of the zombie war. Now I can believe someone can do something so cold-blooded; that isn't unbelievable. Problem is Brooks writes the guy as Snidely Whiplash: he fucking GIGGLES during his recollections. Its just lazy writing: oooh, Big Business is Evil. It would have been more interesting if the guy felt some guilt, or if he was extremely defensive and denying all charges, or best of all, doped up on anti-depressants that his own company used to produce. Great character idea, botched execution. Aside from that, everything else flows quite nicely.
And now I'm going to bed, because I must go to work at noon and I need my minimum 6 hours to function.
-Ash
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Thx.