Judging adaptations on their own merit

My boyfriend always says you gotta be able to separate the stuff from the stuff. This cryptic phase has a plethora of applications, but I'm finding it increasingly relevant in discussing how critics and audiences receive certain cinematic adaptations. I recently saw Nine and, despite going into it with low expectations from the critical beating it had received, thought it was pretty great. It's no instant classic, of course, but it's definitely nipping at the heels of Chicago, and that puppy won Best Picture! It's sexy, fun, well-acted, well-sung, well-designed, and an all-around fulfilling time at the movies. Quality-wise, it's like Zombieland, another well-executed popcorn movie that critics loved. So I can't help thinking that this critical trashing has something to do with the fact that Nine is not as good as its source material, a little movie you may have heard of called 8 1/2.

Consider this quote from respected critic Claudia Puig: "Nine should have been called 4 1/2 because it doesn't come close to the work of the master who inspired it." That's a completely unfair assessment. Just because a movie isn't as good as one of the greatest films of all time, it's crap? Here's another, from critic Rob Thomas: "You don't have to love Federico Fellini to hate Nine. But it helps." Roger Ebert: "Nine is just plain adrift in its own lack of necessity." Roger, nobody asked you to evaluate the necessity of this film, just the film itself.

All this has got to stop, because it's keeping people from enjoying a good film that never even tries to be as iconic or great as 8 1/2 (and that's not a bad thing!). Classic films have been musical-ified at least as far back as the 50s, maybe further. I think the only unnecessary kind of remake is one that takes a really great and beloved film and makes it again without changing much. Making it a musical, updating it with new technology, changing the circumstances, or reinventing a film that wasn't that good to begin with all create something that's different enough to give a fair shot.

Films adapted from sacred cows of literature have the same problem. The Road, while received much more favorably, drew a lot of grumbles that the "unfilmable" book was ever adapted. Youth in Revolt (which admittedly hasn't come out yet) has drawn preemptive grumbles lamenting that the 500 pages of brilliance captured in the novel can't all be conveyed on screen. That's true - but you have to accept that film and literature are different mediums that will most likely tell a story differently. Film will rarely be able to achieve, for example, the character depth of a source novel, but it also adds visual and auditory elements.

As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as an "unfilmable" anything - look how many successful films came from material stuck with that label. Things might be adapted poorly, but that's not the source material's fault and should never prompt declarations that the film's real problem is just its existence.

So if you ever find yourself using "it's not as good as the original" as a critique, stop yourself and think. What's really the problem? Is it the directing? The screenplay? The acting? If you can't answer that question, then you're not really giving the film a fair chance. After all, think how silly that critique sounds in certain contexts - like, nobody complains that The Ten Commandments isn't as good as the Bible (arguably the most beloved source material of all time!)

What do you think? Are you as sick of this trend as I am?

A response to the Women's Film Critic Circle Awards

Sometimes, I really hate women.

Observe: the 2008 awards of the Women's Film Critic Circle. It's what it sounds like: a bunch of female critics got together and churned out an end-of-the-year list. They have some typical categories, like Best Actress and Best Family Film. Then there are some categories specific to their cause, like the Adrienne Shelly award, for a film that opposes violence against women. Okay, cool. But then there are two categories that annoy the crap out of me and make all women look bad: the Most Offensive Male Characters and the Top Ten Hall of Shame.

For reference, here are the winners (losers?) of those categories:

MOST OFFENSIVE MALE CHARACTERS
Aaron Eckhart: Towelhead
Sam Rockwell: Choke,
Larry Bishop: Hell Ride
Paul Rudd, Sean William Scott: Role Models
Jason Mewes: Zack And Miri Make a Porno

TOP TEN HALL OF SHAME
Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired
House Of The Sleeping Beauties
The Women
The Life Before Her Eyes
The Hottie and the Nottie
Savage Grace
Made Of Honor
The Family That Preys
Hounddog
Zack And Miri Make A Porno


Talk about COMPLETELY MISSING THE POINT OF EVERYTHING.

What these lovely ladies don't seem to understand is that depicting a morally maladjusted character or a character who does bad things does not mean that the director/screenwriter endorses that characters or his actions. Does Clark Gregg, the director of Choke, think that sex addicts are totally awesome and everyone should be one? No. But he chose to tell the story of one because he thought it would be interesting. Similarly, in Towelhead Aaron Eckhart played a married man who rapes an underage girl. Does Alan Ball endorse this behavior? Of course not, but it was an incredible, nuanced, and above all, compelling performance. I'll skip over Hell Ride, since I haven't seen it, and ponder what the crimes of Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott were in Role Models...that they liked sex and didn't like kids? Jason Mewes in Zack and Miri also seems to be on this list for liking sex.

This reminds me of a discussion I had with my boyfriend about a student film someone in one of my classes made. After workshopping the script in class, I pointed out that the girlfriend of the main character was ridiculous and offensive. Mere seconds after the boyfriend would upset her by being profoundly insensitive and closed off, she would start pawing at him for sex. She was like the sexbot of the writer's wildest fantasies. When I pointed this out to my class, everyone else in the class (all male) ganged up on me and said that it was totally possible, because there were really girls like that. It still bothered me, though. When I mentioned it to my boyfriend, he agreed that yes, there are really girls like that, but writing the character that way is simply uninteresting and one-dimensional. Then I realized what had really bothered me about the character and the script: it exemplified heinously bad writing and character development. She could have been an incestuous coke-dealing rapist prostitute for all I care, as long as she was interesting and well-developed.

As for the Hall of Shame, I wish they had offered reasons for inclusion of each film. For example, they probably included The Hottie and the Nottie because of the inner beauty/outer beauty conflict, but I think the rest of the world would have included it because it stars Paris Hilton, who is not just an embarassment to women but to the human race. It's also featured prominently in the IMDB Bottom 100, so it's just terrible. Similarly, The Life Before Her Eyes, The Women, and Made of Honor are just bad movies. But Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, which I've heard good things about, probably just made them throw their hands up in despair because of Polanski's statutory rape charge. Allegedly the film introduces the notion that the justice system evaluating Polanski's case may have been a bit wobbly, but these lady critics may have wildly misconstrued this as endorsement. Similarly, Savage Grace is about mother-son incest that ends in murder, which is messed up, but based on a true story. And I don't know what their problem is with Zack and Miri Make a Porno. People make real pornos, and they have far more graphic sex acts in them than the movie (I think the most scandalous thing is anal?). This movie is just funny.

The link I provided also lists awards from past years that are equally ridiculous. The 2007 awards are particularly bipolar in that they both praise and condemn some of the same movies (Atonement, Hairspray). Their placement of Atonement in the Hall of Shame really makes me think they have a problem with sex in general.

So there you have it. I appreciate what this organization is trying to do, as women and their stories are sorely under-represented in cinema, but I think they may be actually holding the cause back by getting their petticoats in a bunch over every single representation of vice and sin on screen.

What do you think?

What a movie ad's choice of endorsing quote says about the film quality

Having worked at a video store and having seen my fair share of movie posters, ads, and DVD covers in my time, I feel that I have developed a pretty good system of "reading" endorsement quotes. It's really not enough to hear that it's the best movie of the year - you need to know who said so. Additionally, it's only partially about what reviews were received - it's about what review is displayed. Presumably, the quote they choose to flaunt is the best they have. A movie isn't going to proudly display a quote from some podunk reviewer for an Alabama newspaper if they have a glowing review from Variety. So, going on the assumption that the review on the poster is the best and most prestigious one the film has to date, let's see how you can interpret their choice to determine the film's quality. I know this sytem isn't perfect, but it's fairly accurate. Please don't bother giving yourself a hernia from angry commenting, because I know there are exceptions and on some level, this is INTENDED TO BE HUMOROUS. I have provided crappy pictures that I took myself as examples.

If the most prominently (or only) displayed endorsement quote is from...

Local TV or radio stations: it's crap. Also, be wary of reviews that are just straight comparisons. One of my all-time favorites is "If you like Jack Black, you'll like Nacho Libre!" (from the Nacho Libre poster. Wow, bold statement!)

Roger Ebert: This can mean one of two things. It either means that every critic loved it and they snatched up Roger Ebert's quote because he has the most name recognition, OR Roger Ebert was the only one who liked it. Very often he's alone in his favorable opinion of a movie.

Pete Hammond (of Maxim/hollywood.com): Doesn't look good. This guy is the world's biggest sellout. I don't think he has ever written a bad review in his life. He called The Women, a chick flick most chicks couldn't get behind, "hilarious, flat-out fun."

Tabloids/fashion magazines: it's crap. They probably just liked it because it some someone fabulous in it. (If you can't read it, the endorsements below are from Star and Vogue.)

Peter Travers (of Rolling Stone): Peter Travers' opinon of films is comparable to a 13-year-old boy's opinion. He will like it if it is cool, fast-paced, or features explosions, frat-boy humor, a totally awesome soundtrack, and/or shiny things. Depending on your tastes, this is not necessarily bad.

Horror websites, i.e. fangoria.com - It will appeal to horror fans and no one else.

No review: This was not screened for press. It is most certainly crap, and even its makers have no faith in it.

Dropping festival names: If it says the film was an official selection or won things, that's a good sign. Be wary, however, when it says it was just...there.

Associated Press: AVOID.

Also:

Some family-type organization: Children can see it and they will not start worshipping Satan. Other than that, no quality can be guaranteed.

Generally, the smaller the name of the reviewing party is printed, the less people want you to know who said it and just remember the sentiment.

Have you found these assessments to be true?

A rebuttal to Armond White

Today I received an email from Dan over at FilmBabble, asking for my thoughts on Armond White's recent article in the New York Press (available here ). Specifically, my angry thoughts. The article is long, but you only have to skim it to get a sense of White's point, which is his passionate hatred for all film bloggers. Angry thoughts were not hard to come by after reading it.

First, a little background on White. Googling him reveals many interesting things, most notably a blog devoted solely to "parsing the confounding film criticism of Mr. Armond White" (to use their words). White is found to be a critic who has made a career out of making enemies, focusing more 0n films/directors he hates than ones he likes. He dismisses style, context, and production in films and claims that the only thing that matters is the message - which, by his logic, would make anything aired on C-Span the best movie of the last ten years. He is notorious for championing films that everyone else pans, including Little Man. Yes, Little Man. He criticized Zodiac for its excessive violence, although it featured only three murder scenes in the first 15 minutes of its 160-minute running time. He called A.I. - Artificial Intelligence one of the 10 greatest films ever made. And as a grammar and style nerd, I have to point out that in this article he does not italicize, underline, or use quotation marks for movie titles, which any tenth grader would know is necessary.

White’s first mistake is grouping all bloggers into one category. I personally think I might belong on the ivory tower that White believes himself to occupy. Though I belong to the unwashed mass of bloggers cluttering his precious cyberspace, I am a film major at a respected college. I could tell you what film stock any movie is shot on, and how they did the special effects. I have read Benjamin and Baudrillard. I have written lengthy papers on sexual transgression in the German silent film Pandora’s Box, recent trends in Korean popular cinema, and auteur theory as it pertains to Annie Hall. But none of this matters. All that matters is that I am a person, with a voice. If all I wanted to do was talk about how Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen movies are the greatest cinematic achievement of all time, I have that right. Because we live in a democracy, the same democracy that affords Armond White a voice. The irony here is that White’s criticism is so far out that if the whole world subscribed to the same elitism that he did, his ideas probably wouldn’t stand a chance!

He also complains about bloggers ruining cultural discourse. Last time I checked, doesn’t “discourse” refer to people discussing things? And isn’t that what bloggers do? I noticed that on the page for his article, there was no option to comment or reply - heaven forbid he engage in discourse with plebeians!

Another tragic irony of this article is that White accuses film bloggers of “chipping away at the professionalism they envy.” Armond, honey. Were you ever a young boy that liked to talk about movies? Perhaps you would go to the theater with some friends and then afterwards discuss what you saw? Or was that banned in the apparent dictatorship you grew up in? No, it wasn’t, because you’re from Michigan, not Maoist China. So, what us bloggers did is take that discussion that I absolutely know you’ve had all your life and transplant it to the interwebs. We have no hidden agenda! We just like to discuss film! I started blogging because my filmic discourse was limited to myself and my friend Scott and, although fun, it often came to a dead end because we hadn’t seen very many of the same movies. So I opened my thoughts up to the blogosphere and started an ongoing discussion with hundreds of people about cinema. And as far as bloggers “envying” professionalism, that’s just poorly-disguised fear on White’s part that us peasants are going to put him out of a job.

Some of White’s observations about the current state of film criticism are simply insane, and seem to indicate that he doesn’t read any blogs or reviews at all, ever. “Movies are considered fun that needn’t be taken seriously. Movies contain ideas better left unexamined.” “Nowadays, reviewers almost never draw continuity between new films and movie history—except to get it wrong.” He claims that modern movies are escapist entertainment that perpetuates societal denial, which is funny because myself and my aforementioned plebeian friend Scott, after a viewing of There Will Be Blood, noted (without any help from critics!) the trend in modern movies to bravely depict the devastating and destructive consequences of hyper-masculinity. He accuses critics of blindly praising blockbusters (which they do, if they’re GOOD), then goes on to cite the Tom Cruise version of War of the Worlds as a movie containing moments of “personal emotion.” And he actually has the audacity, after all his nonsense, to bash elitism!

When I started reading this article, I was angry. By the time I finished it, I just felt pity for this sorry little man, kicking and screaming away at independent-minded movie lovers who manage to share their views without making atrocious puns like his “It’s entertainment - weakly.”