UPDATE: THE HAPPENING

Just heard on TV: "The director of The Sixth Sense brings you his first R-rated film: The Happening. Starting Friday the 13th".

We are FUCKED.

Film: Steven Spielberg: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

1989.

Summer. Maine.

We are in the process of tearing down an ancient red tin shed in the backyard and building a new wooden one in its place. I spend my evenings running barefoot in the cooling grass, sweaty and grungy and entirely happy with my place in the universe. I am ten years old.

There came a late morning - surely a Saturday, since my father was home from work - with the sun streaming through the kitchen window, when the natural order of my cosmos took a sudden turn for the monumental. My father suggested we go see Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Not for my birthday, not in return for mowing the lawn (my brother was still burdened with that one), but simply because the man must have suspected I would be in awe. Even at that age, I would pore over the TV Week to see what movies would be playing on Cinemax or TBS, and what time, so that I could pop a tape in the VCR and record whatever segment of whatever movie I couldn't catch in person, for whatever reason. Jaws was a favorite. So was Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, of which I had the last twenty minutes on a tape that regularly saw the wheels of the VCR early Saturday mornings - often before sunrise - while I ate a bowl of sugar with Golden Grahams or Shredded Wheat.

This may have been my third or fourth movie seen in a theater in my life, after Return of the Jedi, ET, Flight of the Navigator, and possibly one other. We weren't a theatergoing family; I think the next one I saw was Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, for my birthday in 1991; the intervening two years were a long boil on the stew of my imagination, in which moments from that summer 1989 event simmered and fermented and solidified into cardinal benchmarks of my moviegoing sensibilities. The rats. The tank chase. Books aflame. Rapid decomposition. That sweet, sweet Alison Doody.

It's fair to say, with respect and deference to the influence of, say, Tarkovsky, Tarr, and Herzog, that outside of the sight of a woman jerked violently back and forth by her legs through the calm evening waters off Amity Island, no other film provided such a lasting basis for me as a filmmaker and a film viewer. Two years ago I saw Last Crusade at the Ziegfeld, and I'll be damned if it isn't one of the most unadulteratedly entertaining films Spielberg's made, full of delightfully kinetic action setpieces, fantastic bickering between Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, and intoxicating sights such as the canyons of the American West and Petra. And a veritable cornerstone of my burgeoning sexuality in the form of sweet, sweet Alison Doody.

It is with a sense of deep betrayal and personal affront that I report that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull has taken pornographically blunt advantage of my youthful memories, cashing them in for a quick, cheap fuck on a warehouse floor against a green screen, with no thought toward romance or protection. I cringe for all of the many single-digit-year-olds slurping sodas and crinkling candy bags in the theater around me, who, if they remember the movie at all tomorrow, will have no idea that they have been violated already, their moviegoing identities badly skewed before they're self-aware enough to notice, for somewhere down the road they will find themselves critiquing other films against the formative influence of this lazy, wretched half-baked ratatouille of pilfered joy.

Lazy is the key word. Not long ago, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg gave a joint interview in which Lucas warned that audiences would reject the film, and Spielberg denied as much. This speaks volumes, since Lucas is given story credit, and the movie's problems start there. The stuff that made the Indiana Jones films so enthralling in the past is almost entirely absent here: deft dialogue (delivered swiftly), expedient character development amid and between action sequences brimming with wit, muscle, and fluid grace. Lucas mentioned the audience rejection of his recent Star Wars films as evidence of the certain failure of Crystal Skull, but stops short of suggesting what twenty minutes of this movie make abundantly clear: that the problem is Lucas, and his inability to fashion any communicative cinematic element, such as interesting action or insightful interactions among characters. He's also got an astounding way with dialogue in those films, and has evidently schooled screenwriter David Koepp here with truly astounding results.

Ineptitude seems infectious, or perhaps the input of too many executive-level folks in the development stages proved too diverse to coalesce; either way, Crystal Skull holds together about as tightly as a gob of wood chips, and with far less, I don't know, grace. That word keeps coming to me in describing the Indiana Jones films, because at their best, they're remarkably graceful in pace, plotting, and cinematic fluidity, cutting like butter and zipping along with high-end invisible grease. The impetus to tackle not only Indiana Jones as an older man, but also his Brando-son, and Marion, and John Hurt - I'm still not sure what he's all about - and Ray Winstone - just, come now, STOP already - and THEN the plot (I think it's about aliens. At some level) overwhelms any hope for cohesion to the degree Spielberg has attained in the past with at least two of the three previous films. Oh, and let us not discuss Cate Blanchett here. Let us forget we saw her in it. Goddesses shouldn't be crucified like criminals. Forgiveness implies judgment, and that's for other people.

Here, there is one thing worth admiring, in the same way one can admire a turkey sandwich or modern air travel. For the first time since possibly Schindler's List, Spielberg has taken his Aderol and not tried to infuse every frame with so much Steviepants. Actually, the graphic calmness of this movie is so out of character with contemporary Spielberg that I'm filled with enormous doubt that he actually directed the thing. He may want to consider taking me up on my doubt. Not that he should return to the chaotic perfectionism that ruined Munich. I just think maybe he was bored to tears this time around. Like everyone else, it seems.

You know, I didn't need this. Three solid movies worked fine - better than fine, really; dramatically fine, even classically fine. Indiana Jones didn't need to achieve military rank or graduate away from thugees and Nazis. Marcus Brody didn't have to die, and Marion Ravenwood never had to come walking back onto my screen again. It's not because I don't care, guys, it's just that I own you now, and you don't get to change.

Film: Tim Burton: "Sweeney Todd" (2007)

I was excited to watch and then review “Sweeney Todd” because there was a period during my teenage years during which I was completely obsessed with the original cast recording of the Broadway show. At the time I was struck by both the music and the unusual setting and plot for a Broadway musical. The genre isn't entirely without darkness, but “Sweeney Todd” was revolting, gory and frightening, with no real catharsis, a long night's journey into night (Editor's Note: LOL)*. It debuted in 1979 but still has some fairly shocking material (some which the film doesn't include). The new film loses a lot of the sheer force of darkly comic terror that the original cast recording has, but is still a fairly flick, if largely as a result of the moments from the original that it gets right (and a few functional diversions).

I must start with the performances. Johnny Depp was adequate, if un-amazing. The comic menace he displays towards Beedle Bradford as he promises him “the closest shave of your life” was an excellent moment. His tiresome lack of anything like depth is not. I used to have great respect for Johnny Depp as an actor but I'm beginning to think he should stick to character roles and any leads like Captain Jack Sparrow, which require no real depth but plenty of transient inspiration – something Depp excels at. Bonham-Carter was slightly less adequate. I thought her lazy delivery didn't particularly fit the role. Admittedly, I may be partial to Angela Lansbury's original performance, which couldn't be more different. She was all desperate energy and hyper-rational ambition, so much so that she seems more psychopathic than Sweeney Todd. Bonham-Carter plays the role as a weak-willed romantic (with some morbid tendencies, granted). Blah. Alan Rickman plays Judge Turpin very well as Alan Rickman. Fucking Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer shows up and gets his throat slit. I think he had like two lines but I get all pumped when I see random Buffy cast-members everywhere because I am a nerd that way.

Tim Burton's typical stylistic over-eagerness was on display everywhere. Sometimes it works very well, more often not so much. I've seen it much better applied in previous efforts (“Ed Wood,” “Edward Scissorhands,” the underrated “Sleepy Hollow”). The final image of Todd's death felt like the most quintessentially Burton moment but it also completely misses the real tragedy of the moment. It's a beautiful shot, but it's the exact kind of moment where you wish Burton would stop being so goddamn Burton-y for a moment and just show something like the reality of the scene. The drama of the moment is so powerful on its own – why comment on it so loudly?

I have to address the music, too. I prefer writing about music, anyway, and the original score is such a quirky, brilliant piece of music. The film makes a few mistakes here. First, they decided to cut the Chorus which occasionally shows up in the original to comment on the proceedings. The music written for the choruses is among the most impressive of the score. Sondheim employs baroque counterpoint, leitmotif and all sorts of other surprising things that you don't normally expect to hear in a fucking Broadway musical. Second, the orchestration employed is much lighter, softer and watered-down. Which is a real shame. It loses a lot of its angular menace. Indeed, the entire score is almost entirely built around leitmotif, being more or less comprised of maybe 20 different threads of music. It's a marvelous effect when used so liberally, as previously sublime melodies show up in the darkest places and are smashed together in surprising ways. The new recording keeps a lot of this but the cuts, in places, hurt. Also, Johnny Depp does an admirable job of trying, but Len Cariou's original is incomparably superior. It's like comparing Mozart's 40^th Symphony with the Verve's “Bittersweet Symphony” (zing!).

Anyway, right. Uhm. So the new movie's worth seeing, but I wouldn't make it a top priority. It's a bit of a disappointment in how it mishandles such excellent original material – this really should have been a better film – but perhaps those with little or no familiarity with the original may enjoy it a bit more. So...three stars.

Also, for comparison's sake, here's a bootleg video from the original theatrical production and the new soundtrack version of the same song, “Epiphany.”:

Sweeney Todd on IMDB

Sweeney Todd (Original Cast Recording) on the iTunes Store:


Sweeney Todd (Tim Burton Recording) on the iTunes Store:


*I don't have an editor, of course, just talking to myself.

Film: A Preemptive Word About M. Night Shyamalan

Ten days from the eve of the release of Master M. Shyamalan's latest magus opus The Happening, a speculative gesture toward the universe of individualistic profundity that inhabits his films. I feel uniquely suited to The Task, having seen every major film he's made since The Sixth Sense, easily the worst of M.'s progressively brilliant catalogue.

At the time of The Sixth, M.'s problem was a distinct lack of commitment to the personal nature of his plot twists. "Alive" to "dead" has a certain mythic stature, but lacks M.-based dimension. Surely he saw the problem at once, and moved to correct it in the subsequent Unbreakable, giving witness to The Cinema's first (to my knowledge) and heretofore only whip smart ending involving naturalistic comic book heroism. Fantasy and salt-of-the-earth reality coalesce to form a striking indictment of purple-clad men, but M. shot into The Stratosphere of personal filmmaking three years later with the jolting psychological revelation in Signs - psychology of otherworldly proportions.

Not content with the earthly sideshow melodrama of Mel Gibson's religious fanaticism, the wearing of foil hats, and the crushed-car death of his wife, M. posits a race of aliens who would consciously travel potentially light years through space and certainly time to make art in cornfields - on a planet overwhelmingly irradiated with a toxic liquid. Nevermind the artistic drive of these sentients; the psychosis compelling them to risk life and scaly limb for the sake of creation alone inspires a complex mix of anxiety, awe and, really, personal introspection. Would I do the same? Would I support a friend doing the same? Alone with my thoughts at night, the question still Haunts me.

The quandary frightened us, upending the illusion of self-willed destiny we maintain as a matter of necessity. M. graciously scaled back a bit in his next outing, confining his great paradoxes to this, our own, mortal coil - and answered the fears of The Many. Conjuring a pod of intellectuals going out of their way to force their own destiny, of The Village M. fashioned a blazing blood-red beacon of hope for those of us jangled to the bone by insecurity, by the untidy, discomforting rigors of programmatic modern life, by Bush and his scare-mongering control tactics. The albino savior, raceless and more or less sexless, leads us to freedom from the arch confines of intellectual oppression. And we are redeemed.

Abject irresponsibility undoubtedly led most of the studios - and here I am talking about Disney - to pass on M.'s next project. They saw The Truth layered throughout, and yielded shamefully. Lady in the Water, a searing, scathing, rapacious diatribe against evil itself, shocked and disturbed in ways M.'s previous work could only think about, lightly. Expansively addressed to both The Everyman and the giant cat-wolf monsters of Wolfgang Petersen's inimitable The Neverending Story, M. adds a touch of class and grass to the proceedings with the sensitive casting of Paul Giamatti, and with grass, but he does not stop there. Conscious of the thematic limitations of his prior work, M. addresses himself, as Himself, the god and creator of the rapidly strengthening M. Night Shyamalan universe. The boundless Storyteller. The Prophet. The Lord of Redemption, attacked and belittled by those of no faith and less intellectual and aesthetic authority. The Power of the Story Denied. Thought Denied. Belief Denied. Life Denied. Consciousness Itself Denied.

We are drained. It may be impossible for M. to top himself here, although the title The Happening suggests a keen awareness of the perils of excessive directness. His latest may have to be an entirely black screen with a silent soundtrack to completely destroy our blown minds.