Films Folded
Ted Goranson is a writer and consultant who works with structured narrative as well as other topics. Visitors may want to visit the Films Folding Community.
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August 23, 2010 The Quantum Activist: Qubit Cubits
Year: 2009Ted's Evaluation: 1 / 4
IMDB Rating: 8.5
DVD at Amazon
Gosh, yet another something to buy as a shortcut to enlightenment. Yet again we encounter quantum physics as the magical combo: a scientific mystery that "proves" the mysteries beyond. Just what those mysteries are, depends on the salesman of course, but it is usually some Jungian truths presented with sparkly eyes.
In this case, we get an esteemed professor who teaches the stuff, so he must know what he is talking about, right? Oh, and he is a Hindu with spiritual awards as well, so has street cred there too. Problems:
What we have in this film is basically this one guy prattling on. I suppose one could edit this into a tight film like Linklater did in "Waking Life," or could spread out like we saw in "Ayurveda." Of we could have amusing animations like "What the ##."
You have to know a few things. One is that just because someone teaches accounting doesn't mean he has insights into the dynamics of the economy. Quantum mechanics is clerical work; it is quantum logic (or whatever you choose to call the principles when divorced from physics) that is where the mysteries lay. You should also know that there is a long and seamy relationship between spiritual pitchmen and scientific notions: magnetism, vibrations, relativity, the fourth dimension have all had their turn as proof without realizing that they are metaphor.
This is bad filmmaking, bad science and unconvincing spiritual wisdom. I would point the student to "Andrey Rublyov" instead.
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August 23, 2010 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: Sparkles after Hitting
Year: 2010Ted's Evaluation: 3 / 4
IMDB Rating: 8.2
DVD at Amazon
This is the most fun I've had at the movies for a while. I believe is it because it is inventive in several ways and the inventiveness is coherent through the thing and across the narrative pathways (cinematic effects, narrative rhythm, character reactions). It is not difficult to push the envelope in any one of these, in fact I see it done even accidentally because film conventions form such narrow roads.
But it seems difficult as getout to control it well enough that it emanates from a coherent world, to make a long form project that lives in the inventiveness rather than just sees it from time to time. Much of this is credited to the filmmaker, and how he can focus his team. Since there is very little motion capture, the effects did not have to be planned in advance and I imagine there was a lot of tinkering.
Some of the credit has to go to the source, which I understand is a comic. I have not seen it but I imagine the overall shape was set and refined there.
But we have to give the key actor credit too. He has to understand the cosmology of the thing well enough to convincingly inhabit it. This is a difficult acting challenge. Remember Bill Murray? It was his gift I believe to anticipate the finished tone of the film and place himself square within it. "Groundhog Day" depended on us seeing that it made sense to him.
I have to admit to a generational deficiency that made this even better for me. The girls were unattractive, excepting the redhead drummer who is shunted to buddy status. They were emotionally damaged, intellectual nitwits and not physically desirable. In the story of course, they are all a guy lives for, literally. I am imagining that it made sense to the young audience that these trivial beings mattered. But for me, it increased the weirdness and otherworldliness of the thing.
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August 22, 2010 Flyboys: Eye Knots
Year: 2006Ted's Evaluation: 3 / 4
IMDB Rating: 6.5
DVD at Amazon
*** This review may contain spoilers *** I suppose the first step in self-realization is understanding what your personal porn profile is. For me it is spatial, and I am a sucker for just the sort of thing this highlights. It has some dumb character-oriented stuff, and the necessary structure to let us know about the war. But it is packed with air combat scenes. The computer generated character of these scenes was noticeable, I am sure, had I been looking for it, but I wasn't. I was flying.
There are three kinds of shots here. The first are the static shots of the guys in their cockpits, so that we can see that it is not planes at war, but these guys we are supposed to care about. Boring.
But then we have the shots where we see the maneuvers of the planes, spliced in with the POV shots. The composition of these is not particularly inventive. The maneuvers are not historically accurate or aerodynamically possible. But they fit the spatial vocabulary we have built incrementally starting with "Hell's Angels," punctuated by "Star Wars" and elaborated in the last few years by Pixar. The way this crew carries the viewer through these motions is really quite competent and that is saying a lot. It has to do with continuity and rhythm of shifts in space of the planes and the eye.
There is a girl, natch. Pretty. The hero does not get the girl, and the black guy does not get killed. So the story is intelligent from that perspective.
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August 22, 2010 The Last Sin Eater: Harmful Superstitions revealed
Year: 2007Ted's Evaluation: 1 / 4
IMDB Rating: 5.7
DVD at Amazon
I watch these missionary films from time to time. There is an earnestness in most of them that makes up for the fact that they are so horrible.
In my city is Pat Robertson's film school, training hundreds of people a year to make these things. I often wonder what will happen when they actually are able to make good movies?
I am beginning to believe that this may never happen. Film may be making Christianity obsolete. I know this may sound strange. Cinema seems profoundly malleable, a vehicle for any story. And Christianity has survived by adapting far, far from what Jesus believed, making any necessary compromise.
But film has rather rigid dynamics when combined with the forces of how we define ourselves through stories. It is extremely flexible, but only within a conceptual marketplace where the collective projections of self reinforce each other. Cinema allows us to define our own cosmos. It worries me that the rivers are sometimes so banal, but such the way of the collective — and young imaginations have surprising sophistication.
Christianity on the other hand is about accepting a prefabricated story. Well, different ones depending on the preacher's agenda, but the cosmos is defined in a very top down manner. Theoretically, they could overlap a lot, but that is not what the world seems to want. Even the most obvious Jesus stories like Harry Potter don't follow the rules of the Christian institution.
This film has prompted me to believe that it may be impossible to make powerful cinema with the existing dogma. Everything about it fails.
The irony is that the story flows are about rigid superstition being made obsolete, not by the Bible in the story, but because people simply want to explain for themselves what the world is.
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