See! An Impressive Musical Instrument That Only Plays One Song

Via Jad Abumrad's Twitter and BLDGBLOG, check out this impressive musical instrument constructed for a Japanese commercial:

It's one of the more complicated things I've seen constructed solely for a commercial since these:

Ah, corporate sponsors. What wonders we'd be missing out on without you.

'Sucker Punch', 'At Long Last Love', and Why I Hate Rotten Tomatoes

If you go over to the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes right now, you'll see that Sucker Punch has a rating of 20% fresh. Peter Bogdanovich's long unavailable homage to 1930s musicals At Long Last Love (Now available on Netflix Instant View!) fares even worse, with a 10% rating. However, despite this seemingly overwhelming negative evidence, I've recently seen both movies, and I'm glad I did.

See, even though I'd call both movies "interesting failures", and even the positive reviews of both films call them deeply flawed, I don't think that a simple number ranking can summarize what's good or bad about these, or really any, films. That's the thing I don't like about sites like Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic. They don't give you any perspective or reasons why these films are getting a lot of good or bad reviews.

I don't think that looking at reviews before seeing a movie is a bad thing, but I personally like to find reviewers that I have similar tastes to, and then I like to see what it was they did or didn't like about the movie. For example, I've been reading Roger Ebert's reviews since they first went online, and I've read enough to know when he might be inserting his own personal bias into a review. He seems to grade certain actresses, like Jennifer Lopez, on a curve (no pun intended, I promise), and he seems to give more positive reviews to children's movies and documentaries. I can't blame him, he follows his heart, and other bodily organs, and that's what I like about him as a reviewer- he's not afraid to stand apart from the herd.

Take his review of At Long Last Love. At two and a half stars, it's technically a "thumbs down" review, and yet he spends a good portion of it baffled by the extreme negative reactions of the rest of the critical community.

I personally agree with him on a lot of his points- the movie is an homage to the comedy musicals of the 1930s, but while those movies had wafer-thin plots that served to showcase the singing and dancing talents of their stars, this one has a similarly insubstantial plot that showcases Bogdanovich's fetish for old movies. The jokes have a heavy layer of dust, and watching the stars attempt to imitate Astaire and Rogers is like watching a particularly sad night of celebrity karaoke. Burt Reynolds seems a lot more at home as a good ol' boy than he does here as an aristocrat, and Cypil Shepherd was probably cast mostly because she was dating the director.

However, there's still some shining moments to be found here. Madeline Khan turns in a typically good performance, managing to be sultry, innocent, and charming all at once, and a lot of the supporting actors are fun to watch, possibly because some of them are older, and had the chance to act in the kind of movie they're paying tribute to. And even with its clumsy musical numbers and miscast performances, the whole thing does manage to generate some of the energy of its predecessors.

I think it's entirely possible that the large number of scathing reviews comes down to timing and circumstance. Peter Bogdanovich had just come off the flop of the even more infamous Daisy Miller (also with a miscast performance by Cybil Shepherd), after four consecutive hits (Targets, The Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc?, and Paper Moon). Bogdanovich began his career as a critic, and had managed to get his foot in the door as a director, and had parlayed his encyclopedic knowledge of movie history into some films that stand on their own as true classics (Paper Moon is my personal favorite- also on Instant View!). When his elaborate tributes to by-gone eras began to collapse under their own weight, isn't it possible that his former colleagues were perhaps a little to eager to preemptively start dancing on his grave?

Now, let's talk about Sucker Punch. This isn't so much an homage as a great big stew of geek culture tropes, with themes of female empowerment and exploitation thrown in for good measure. In fact, most of the reviews seem to hinge on which of those two themes the movie is actually about. There's this review from Twitch that comes down hard on the director himself, saying that the movie is straight exploitation. I would disagree with a lot of the points made in the review- yes, the girls all do go by stripper names, and they are scantily clad for pretty much the whole movie, but I think that this is because Zack Snyder has made a movie ABOUT the fact that we like watching movies where girls in short skirts kick copious amounts of ass.

On the other end of the spectrum, there's this review over at /Film that defends the movie, saying that it is about the line between exploitation and empowerment, and not merely exploitation itself. I think this reviewer reads some things into the film that aren't necessarily there on screen, but I think that it's a film worthy of this kind of interpretation, rather than the dismissal of the Twitch review.

Now, you probably have read all this way wanting to know what I myself thought of Sucker Punch. Here's what I think: there's a very personal vision on display here (this is Snyder's first original script, and the first he wrote himself), and I can't help but be reminded of two other very personal films. With it's cabaret setting, garish production design, and themes of feminine power on the stage, I thought of Moulin Rouge, and with it's multiple levels of reality whose consequences bled over into each other, I was reminded of Inception. Both of those movies had their directors' strengths on full display, and while I think Sucker Punch lacks both the sheer exuberance of the former and the intricate plotting and structure of the latter, I'm still impressed by the visual ambition on display, even if I think the themes are hard to discern from all the flash and dazzle.

There's another, mostly positive, review over at Badass Digest, calling it "thrilling, smart...and deeply flawed". But that quote that sticks out for me in the review is this:

"...to see Zack Snyder stretch the way he does here, going for big ideas and aiming at big themes, is exhilarating. I’d rather have filmmakers fail like this every day of the week than succeed in the way most do, by being bland and safe and stupid."

So, while the reviews may be dire, some movies are worth a look anyway. They may be failures, but, to paraphrase Buzz Lightyear, at least they're failures with style.

David Lynch: Commercial Director?

Inspired by this post about perfume commercials by famous directors, I thought I'd post some of the many commercials directed by David Lynch.

First, the Gucci perfume commercial, which isn't too bizarre, but does feature some Blondie and some trademark blurry slow-motion:

This is a PSA about keeping New York City clean. It encourages you to do so with high-pitched screeches, a plague of rats, and other generally terrifying images.

David Lynch did several Playstation commercials. This is one of the weirdest:

This is a series of Japanese ads he did featuring characters from "Twin Peaks". If you watch them in order, it even tells a little story!

And finally, and probably most strange, is a pregnancy test commercial. It isn't actually that bizarre, except for the fact that it's a pregnancy test commercial directed by David Lynch.

For even more David Lynch commercials (he really did a lot), check this site out.

Stuff I Watched Today

The Mirror (1975)

I don't know that I can offer much insight into this film. Andrei Tarkovsky, whose films unapologetically move forward without stopping to hold the viewer's hand, has here made what could be called his most impenetrable movie. It is a series of scenes, in black and white, in color, interspersed with stock footage and what may be dream sequences. And yet, it doesn't just feel like an art experiment. The movie was not difficult to sit through. In fact, it reinforces my belief that a movie with a slower pace draws you in, letting you soak in its images and ideas, while a movie that rushes you inexorably from plot point to plot point can leave you wondering why you cared about what happened at all.

Paul (2011)

I enjoyed this movie a lot. It's nice to see Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (honestly, a truly classic comedy duo that I hope gets to be in a dozen more movies) together, and although this movie lacks some of the subtlety and intricate construction of their movies with Edgar Wright, it is a lot fun to watch.

They have surrounded themselves with a great cast (Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Jason Bateman, Bill Hader, Joe LaTruglio, Jane Lynch, Dave Koechner and more!), and while the movie settles into some standard action scenes toward the end, this is a movie where it's just fun to watch these actors bounce off of each other.

It did make me think about the use of movie references as jokes, though. One of the film's weakness is that, particularly toward the end, there are references meant to be funny that just fall flat. One in particular (Jason Bateman shooting his radio, and then saying "Boring conversation anyway"), fall flat in the theater I was in, and I think it's because it violates the rule of a good movie reference- Don't let the reference itself be the joke. In the example above, the only joke is that that is also a line from Star Wars. In the context of the scene, the movie just stops to let Jason Bateman say a line that you might recognize, and then proceeds. In a post-"Family Guy" era, this just isn't enough to qualify as good comedy.

An excellent example of a good film reference from Shaun of the Dead is the scene where the guys are talking to Shaun's mom on the phone and decide to come rescue her. She protests a bit, and then Ed shouts "We're coming to get you, Barbara". For fans of zombie movie, they'll spot the reference, but for those who don't, the scene proceeds without them thinking they've missed anything. The reference is organic and moves the story forward, rather than winking at us with it's clever inclusion.

Top Hat (1935)

I'll be honest here: I didn't really pay a lot of attention to this one except for the dancing sequences. Astaire and Rogers are brilliant when they're dancing together, but the plots surrounding them are wafer-thin "idiot plots" where someone is always missing one tiny bit of information that somehow keeps the happy couple apart. Their movies are almost like the inverse of Marx Brothers movies, which keep stopping for random musical numbers that you just want to end so that the comedy hijinks can continue (Harpo and Chico's numbers are excepted from this. Zeppo's singing is not.) With Astaire and Rogers, you just want them to get to the dancing already.

So Much Promise....

This movie has a 1.8/10 rating on IMDb, but there's nothing I don't like about this poster.

"Justified" (2010- )

I'm in the middle of watching the first season of Justified right now, and I'm really liking it a lot. i'm not going to do an episode by episode deconstruction or anything, since there's plenty of other sites out there that do that kind of thing already. I just wanted to jot down a few things about the show that I think make it so good:

1. It's completely unpredictable. Not a "guess who's going to die this week" kind of unpredictability, but the kind where you have no idea where each individual episode is going. Ten years ago, with most of the shows on TV, you could tune in, see what kind of show you were watching, and guess pretty much what format the episode would follow. If it was a crime/police procedural show, the mystery would be wrapped up by the end of the episode, status quo maintained. Sitcoms were also bending over backwards to make sure that nothing major changed episode to episode. Now, some of the best shows on TV, like "Breaking Bad", "Mad Men", and "Community", don't just use variations on the formula, they don't use one at all. Plots that seem like they will last all episode long might get abandoned midway through. A character might spend all episode long trying to kill a fly, or suddenly find themselves on a chase inside the world's biggest blanket fort. You just never know what is going to happen, and "Justified" has that same level of unpredictability.

2. It's episodic while still maintaining an overarching narrative. Nowadays, serialized stories are the norm on dramatic TV. So much so that just missing a single episode can leave you lost (no pun intended). "Justified" definitely has story elements that carry over all season long, and the actions of characters do not get forgotten from episode to episode, but each episode also manages to have a stand-alone story as well. This is a remarkable balance- giving all the recurring characters something to do while telling a different story each week, and "Justified" pulls it off nicely.

3. It's a great showcase for character actors. Timothy Olyphant (who I guess doesn't really qualify as a character actor) hasn't really stood out to me in anything else I've seen (I still haven't made it through "Deadwood"), but he's perfect for his part here. Charming, cool, but with a mean streak that makes me think he just might be capable of terrible things. The rest of the cast is also excellent, and each episode manages to show off it's impressive array of eccentric guest stars, whether it's Robert Picardo as an eccentric art dealer or Alan Ruck as a dentist on the run from the mob. I should also mention Walton Goggins. Mostly just because I like typing "Walton Goggins".

4. The dialogue feels like it's straight out of an Elmore Leonard book. This is not surprising, since the show is based on a story of his, and he is himself a producer on a few episodes. His distinctive voice and knack for snappy conversation comes through in every episode, even though he hasn't actually written any of them. If you're going to make a show exploring crime and all it's dramatic and sometimes hilarious facets, it's good to be inspired by one of the masters.

Anyway, there's some of my thoughts on what I hope continues to be one of my new favorite shows.

Oh, and it's also got some of the best opening credits in recent memory:

Unstoppable (2010)

Trains are perfect vehicles for motion pictures. They're big enough that you can set an entire movie on them, but they're sleek enough that you still get the excitement of seeing them in motion, unlike, say, a cruise ship. Plus, they're a ready-made metaphor for all kinds of things: the growing societal divide in Ozu's Tokyo Story (and many other of his films), the encroaching modernization of Once Upon a Time in the West, and good old-fashioned sex, most famously in the ending of North by Northwest.

The train in Unstoppable (spoiler alert: the title is a lie!) isn't really a metaphor for anything except maybe corporate bumbling. I was mostly curious to see the movie because I wanted to know how many variations on "Get that school bus full of preschoolers off the tracks!" there could be before it got old. Only one bus of students is threatened, along with a horse trailer, an errant woodchuck, and all of Stanton, PA. Or at least the part closest to the tracks.

Tony Scott manages to bob and weave his camera over every inch of the train, and he is mostly successful in keeping things visually interesting, considering the movie consists mainly of people yelling at each other over walkie-talkies. I was wondering how you could have an exciting climax where the focus had to be a train slowing down (Back to the Future III solved this problem marvelously by making the goal not stopping the train, but rocketing it into the future), and the film still manages to keep things exciting.

There was one bit that really made me laugh, though. Much of the film is told through newscasters relating events as they unfold (complete with on-the-spot footage that looks suspiciously like it was filmed by Tony Scott), and at one point, the train is in danger of running off a curve with dangerous chemicals on board, causing a massive explosion. As if this news isn't dramatic enough, the news report then shows a computer-generated dramatization of this very event happening. Now, since I can't imagine that the TV station just happens to have a graphic of an exploding train hurtling over a curve on hand, I imagined a scene something like this:

News Director: Phil, get in here, we need an animated graphic of a train flying off a curve and then exploding!

Phil: We just found out about this possiblity ten minutes ago, and in twenty minutes, we'll be able to see the actual event if Denzel Washington and Captain Kirk don't stop that train! I have literally a window of about fifteen minutes in which to create this elaborately animated sequence that we will never be able to use again. Plus, don't you think it's a little insensitive to the families of the men on board who are watching our broadcast?

News Director: Explosions! Violence! Trains! PG-13 Profanities! Now!

It's for ridiculous stuff like this that I watch these ridiculous movies.