Tag: film

The Power of the Original, the Creativity of Change

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 1 Comment

In The Source and Its Creative Feelings, I wrote about the emotions and energy that can power inspiration and ideas. In this article, I’m talking about the material and the quality of it that can fuel that kind of inspiration.

So I was watching the classic 1963 film Jason and the Argonauts last night, and it occurred to me just how much it was tangentially in there in the culture of my childhood. It wasn’t so much the movie itself as it was the aesthetics and the attitude of it. In fact, the only film that really comes to my mind with that same spirit is Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.

Whenever I thought of the ancient past or mythology as a child, I used the imagery of these movies and others like them to inform myself of how both should have looked like. Then I fast-forward this concept of mine by a few years. I used to think that the fantasy genre were all stories like The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, followed by Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, and I tried to write exactly like them: especially the latter two series.

I thought that some of my more weirder story ideas–including an alternate storyline with The Ten Commandments–were silly and a waste of time, or at the very least beyond my means and personal faculties to create at the time.

This was before I realized that there was original source material.

Every story ever made is an echo of another story that exists before it, or coexists alongside of it in another form. But every story as a source: a prototype or “Ur-Text” (Ur being a term for the mythical first of something, such as the first ever human city-state) or place that is tapped into.

I believe that every creator taps into that source. However, I also think that the strength of a creator’s link to that source all depends on where and how they tap into it. Originally, I was going to say that a creation inspired by an original source–or the closest known or accessible thing–depends on one thing, but after thinking about it a bit more I realize there are two elements involved.

The first element is, like I said, finding the earliest myths or art-forms that you can read, understand, or learn to understand and take inspiration from them. They are the closest things to the source, or what the famous mythologist Joseph Campbell called “the mono-myth”: the supposed first story that all sentient human stories come from. I feel that once you learn to understand the spirit of the earliest story or source that you can find with regards to your work–and specifically use it to gain your own personal creative slant on it–then you have gained something powerful and you are more than on your way to augmenting or discovering your own creative voice.

But then there is the second element that I thought of very recently: which is that once you gain an idea of the original source material that created the story or story-type you are working on, you must make it timeless in a way that everyone can relate to, and therefore make it relevant. Take what you have learned or understood and apply it to your time and the issues and themes that are important to you as a creator, a person, or even both.

Think about it: before DeMille’s Ten Commandments, or Jason and the Argonauts, all there was to determine how the ancient world was, and how their myths functioned were books, broken sculptures and fragments of art. The creators of both films had to go through all of that material and decide what they were going to use or change. I won’t even go into Ten Commandments, because there have been many other films and stories created from that Biblical tale at different points in time, and even the ancient Greek myth of the Argonauts has changed throughout time and culture as well.

But what I am saying is that the creators of both looked at the original sources as much as they could and made something, and added character and motivations that audiences could relate to. Even J.R.R. Tolkien looked at ancient Nordic tales and history in the creation of his Middle-Earth: which in turn informed how a lot of the fantasy genre derived from it would be for a time.

Like I said, I do think that knowing the original source of something gives you a special insight into that thing and in making something that is either a homage to it, or a unique derivation. This is what I have adopted for a lot of my writing and creation process. It gives you more to work with and more to change should you choose to do. And that is the key here: knowing the closest source gives you more choices … especially with what you want to reveal what is important to you about them and other people.

When I was growing up, I took films like Jason and the Argonauts with its stop-motion clay animation less seriously than I did the developing CGI graphics coming around then. But now, looking back I realize just how much of that influenced the creation of CGI and what film-making could be: as well as storytelling. Maybe it’s because as a culture now almost everything that is “retro” or considered old is popular and new again. Of course, as some other popular cultural articles suggest this could be all be just part of a cycle that happens with every decade or era.

My era of the 80s and onward, as well as the things that inspired them in earlier years, has become a lot of my source material and now I am starting to realize that I can express it. This is a good thing. The possibility that some of the quirky weirdness in some of my stories may have been inspired by Joss Whedon’s irreverent flippant dialogue in Buffy and other shows is an added bonus: from my perspective anyway.

Really, I just like creatively messing around and reading and watching old, good things and good new things for universal and innovative storytelling ideas. I probably could have summarized this whole post into that one sentence, but there you go. 😉

Book Review: Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret

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One evening, when I was living downtown, I came across a book in a church-run thrift store. It was this big thick-paged book with a very luminously colourful ornate cover. I’d never ever heard of The Invention of Hugo Cabret before this point, but I saw that Scholastics had published it, and it was about five dollars or so. So I bought it and it sat in a cupboard for a while until I finished my initial draft of my Master’s Thesis. Then a day or so before leaving on a trip, I began and finished reading it.

Hugo Cabret is the story of an orphaned boy of the same name who finds himself operating and maintaining the clocks of a Paris train station while attempting to fix an old and broken clockwork automaton. It is when he attempts to steal some parts from an old man’s toy booth at the station that he reveals a far greater story and his life changes forever.

I really don’t want to spoil this book. I will tell you now, though, that it is excellent. Brian Selznick is not only an excellent writer that knows how to pace and flesh-out his characters, but he is a brilliant illustrator. Hugo Cabret is essentially an illustrated novel: with pages of text inter-dispersed with sequential pages of softly shaded drawings and stylistically-faded copies of sketches and photographs. It basically looks like a notebook or a journal: especially with the image of a lock on its cover. Given that there is a notebook that features somewhat heavily in the plot–once belonging to Hugo’s inventor father–the aesthetic follows the form well.

What I also like about Selznick’s aesthetic form is that it is on that border between an illustrated novel and a comic: in that while there are pages of words, and pages with pictures and words, there are also entirely silent panels that display interrelated sequences. It’s a nice borderline form and it adds to the content nicely.

In terms of content, this book is apparently labeled a work of historical fiction. This is an interesting designation because while there is definitely one central character that is real and historical, Selznick has taken some creative liberties. I also wonder in light of this if the other characters may be conceptions of this particular character’s work made into real personalities in a meta-narrative sort of manner. I love that kind of thing, in case you didn’t already get that, but even if it’s not true there are definitely moments where the concepts of the characters could very well fit into … other conceptual places.

But what really intrigues me about this book, aside from its liberties and ambiguities as “historical fiction,” is how it eventually focuses on the medium of film. In contemporary times, we often take moving film for granted. It had to develop from somewhere after all: both technologically and artistically. Even Hollywood itself was a small independent pioneering workshop studio at one time before it gained more resources and popularity.

While this story seems to take place in the 1920s, it refers after a while to the turn of the century when film was being developed: as well looking at the kinds of people who helped to create it. And who were these people? Some of them were magicians. I am not being figurative here. Some of them, including one of the characters in this book, were artificers, artists, and stage magicians before they became directors and creators. And it makes sense. After all, aside from the fact that vaudeville and its acts, along with theatre, and opera preceded a night at the movies in terms of prestige and guaranteed entertainment, film is kind of like watching a magician’s shadow-play on a thin skein of reality. It is a concept that reminds of Clive Barker’s short story “Celluloid”: where the silver screen is a more permeable layer of existence with our world than we would be comfortable to believe.

I love the image of the magician as film-maker and inventor, and if you read this book I assure you, you will understand what I mean. A friend of mine once said to me that if I embodied any kind of film, it would be the black and white 1902 A Trip to the Moon: something that is extremely symbolic, experimental, even comic, but also parodies and is self-reflexive and aware enough to know that by consciously parodying things, it reveals its opinions on what these things are. I mention this film for a reason that has to do specifically with one aspect of the book. What’s also interesting is that not long after I read this strange and awesome artifact, a film was released based off of it: one I’ve still have yet to see.

That digression aside, I give Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret an unambiguous five out of five. Until next time, au revoir. I seem have something in my eye.

My Best Friend Was a Sith Lord: Tony Pacitti’s My Best Friend Is a Wookiee

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 5 Comments

I found out on Facebook today that Tony Pacitti’s book My Best Friend Is a Wookiee: One Boy’s Journey to Find His Place in the Galaxy is going out of print. Now, I wrote a review of it on Amazon, but now I feel like I have to say something more about it.

Tony Pacitti himself has said that the Star Wars galaxy and culture has changed so much that his role is smaller in it now. Some of the Amazon commentators themselves have written that Pacitti talks about his own life more than Star Wars and that at the very worst, his reminisces are very self-indulgent and have no value.

I think it’s safe to say that I disagree with all of the above. Pacitti talks about a period of history: from the 1980s to the 2000s where the cultural impact of Star Wars and geekery is seen on people growing up. He uses himself as a prime example obviously, since his work is a memoir, yet what I find really striking is just how much his childhood and experiences have in common with my own. Pacitti talks about television shows and games that existed during the same period I grew up in: from Saved by the Bell to Magic Cards. But more than that, he captures that feeling many people had after the Original Star Wars Trilogy ended: that need to see more. It was the need to see and experience more of that universe.

So I too delved into the Star Wars Expanded Universe. I too bought as many books that described that universe in more detail. I role-played in that universe and so did my friends: so do we still in fact. My friends and I watched the Old Trilogy long after the 70s where we hadn’t been born yet and we had similar reactions to the Prequel Trilogy: reactions that have great sympathy with Pacitti’s own.

I’ve written about Star Wars on here before with regards to what my actual issues with were and what I think George Lucas had been trying to do in an ideological way. I won’t rehash them except to say that Lucas too had been influenced by his own childhood and young adulthood to create what he did. Pacitti was definitely informed by what Star Wars represents. Star Wars is a space opera: an epic fantasy with a backdrop of space, a setting with technology, droids, and aliens alongside human beings. It begins “Long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away,” but it is closer than you think.

Star Wars contains archetypes that we can all relate to: facets of different kinds of sentient existence. These characters are accompanied by powerful leitmotifs–by thematic music created by John Williams–to bring out the terror and wonder in us. Is it that inconceivable that a film series like Star Wars, having ingrained itself into the popular consciousness and playing our collective unconsciousness, could have informed our time period after the 70s? I know there are many other films that have done something similar, that this element is what people look for when they want to call a creative work a classic or something seminal: a seed of an idea that leads to something else.

Shouldn’t a classic also be judged by how it influences not just a large amount of lives, but one life? Tony Pacitti manages through a caustic wit to identify himself, and himself in relation to a culture that has not changed at all: in that it is only still growing. So I agree that the culture around Star Wars is changing, but it is still Star Wars and I think that Pacitti’s role in Star Wars–at least with regards to what he wrote in this book–is still relevant and important. I for one am really glad that he wrote it and that I bought the thing when I did two years ago.

We all want to identify ourselves with the things we love because we adopt them or feel sympathy with them as a part of us. So once again Tony, thank you for writing this book and thank you for reminding me who my best friend is.

Film Review: The Batman Rises Once Again

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 3 Comments

I guess it’s about time to pay attention to the Bat Signal. It’s been pretty damned insistent. Cue in the dramatic musical score and …

So a few weeks ago I saw The Dark Knight Rises. What can I tell you. Well, first of all I’m going to make a Spoiler Alert. Then I’m going to say that I liked it. I really liked what Chris Nolan did and what he tried to do. In Batman Begins, we see Bruce Wayne becoming his “true self” after his tragedy and his training with Rais al Ghul and the League of Shadows: which I always thought was a really interesting and new approach to just how disciplined the man had become. In the second film, Dark Knight, we see Batman move away from dealing with fear and the Social Darwinist sense of justice that al Ghul attempted to unleash on Gotham in order to battle the forces of chaos and chance incarnate in the Joker and Harvey Dent-turned Two-Face.

By the third film, we see a very different Bruce Wayne. He’s become a reclusive and something of a broken man. Somehow, he has even sustained a permanent injury from his exploits eight years before. Batman has been blamed for the death of Harvey Dent: to make sure that the latter remains the symbol of justice that he rejected after his accident and has disappeared from the public eye.

Of course, Gotham is never safe ever. Someone always wants to either destroy its corruption or just watch it burn to the ground out of a sense of amusement. Bane seems to want both. Bane is a character from the Batman comics Knightfall story-arc that methodically and brutally breaks the Batman. Of course, everything is not as it seems and as Batman returns to save his city, he realizes that he must unlearn what he has learned: about having no fear.

This was a very intricate film. I really appreciated the details not only in the villains’ plot and the character of Batman himself, but also in the little things. The minor characters actually get a lot more expansion and you see that even as heroes can falter, not everyone has a happy ending and everyone receives a reckoning of some kind. Nolan tries to make everything in this third–and I think final–film come full circle: which is very hard to do considering the show-stealing manic power of Heath Ledger’s Joker from the previous film.

It was fun to figure out who some of the characters were before they were named or revealed. I also liked some of the social commentary that was going on in the film itself. Essentially, Bane creates the ultimate Social Darwinist experiment turned horrible joke where he tells everyone he has a fusion bomb with a counter in the city. Someone in the populace has the trigger and a way to turn it off. He keeps outside aid from coming into Gotham and uses his thugs with stolen Wayne Enterprises technology to help the common people–I guess the 99%–dispense “justice” to the 1% … and anyone else they don’t like. Of course, the joke is that Bane plans to detonate the bomb anyway, but he seems to enjoy watching the ad hoc show-trials–reminiscent of the French Revolutionary tribunals–condemning people to walk on thin ice anyway. Even Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle–who is blatantly hostile to the upper-class and steals from them constantly–begins to see just how sick Bane’s sense of “social justice” truly is.

You could read the social narrative under this movie in a variety of ways, but there was a lot of overall depth to the film’s plot and the way that Bane totally uses Commissioner Gordon’s own speech–a document of truth–to damage Gotham’s self-esteem further was genius. I don’t know if I quite agree on how the characters of Bane and Talia al Ghul were used–Talia in the comics would have respected Batman for being able to defeat her father multiple times and she carried his child as well–but for the movie they served their purpose well. Alfred and Lucius Fox were still in character too and I enjoyed seeing them again.

I did have a few other issues with the film. They might seem minor and hard to define, but I will try my best. The plot, while very intricate, seemed very spread out and if you didn’t pay attention to certain details you might have missed a lot. At times, it even seemed to drag on … a lot. Also, I admit that in the dialogue between Batman’s rough voice and Bane’s metallic one, sometimes I’d only get every other word.

Batman: *Rasp*Rasp*Justice. *Rasp*League of Shadows.*Rasp**Rasp*

Bane:*Rumble*Gotham*Rumble*You will be broken.*Rumble*

Maybe it was the theatre I was in or how the sound effects behind them in their fight might have interfered with acoustics, but I really wish I could have gotten everything that those two intelligent “bad asses” were saying.

In some ways, I feel like for all the depth and such that the film had, it fell short as the concluding movie. I find myself wondering sometimes just what might have happened if Heath Ledger hadn’t died. I mean, the Joker wasn’t killed off in Dark Knight–when Nolan could have easily had him terminated–and if all had gone well, he could have made a comeback. Would The Dark Knight Rises have been different if that happened? It would have been really interesting to see the remnant of the League of Shadows deal with the Joker. The thing about the League is that they are trained to deal with logical or sensible enemy psychologies. Even Batman is just another form of idealist to them: just as they are. All of them deal with an understanding of basic human corruption.

But how would they have dealt with the Joker: an almost shamanic madman who cares nothing for money, or power, or even has a steady personality profile. He is literally a wild card that can read his enemies well while always shifting psychologies. Essentially, the Joker’s purpose is pure chaos. He would die just to make chaos. How would the League of Shadows deal with something so unpredictable. Would they see him as a psychological reaction to global corruption? Or as chaos incarnate itself? As an ally or enemy he would dangerous at best. It could have also been a nice dichotomy between villains: between an inhuman need for justice and a sense of pure madness. I guess we will never know that now, if there was ever such a plan or if this film was the thing Nolan was going to make no matter what.

I will give this film a four out of five. It is worth seeing and it ends the trilogy fairly well. Until next time Bat-fans.

Film Review: The Innkeepers

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I’ve been meaning to make this particular review for a while now. I first saw Ti West’s The Innkeepers at the Toronto After-Dark last summer as the last film of the entire festival. It was also the best film to end it off.

I actually didn’t know what to expect from this film and I only got it because it was the last feature. The title of the thing itself along with the little bit of information provided didn’t really say anything. I will say that I knew it was a ghost story or a “ghost film”: about two employees at a hotel wanting to find evidence of a haunting before it closes.

It didn’t start the way that I thought it would. In fact, the film started off with Claire and Luke–the two employees–ribbing and scaring each other. Claire herself–the protagonist of the film–was energetic, positive and very likable. Luke himself had more of a weary, somewhat laconic personality but you could tell he loved what he did: which was managing his paranormal site online. In their spare time they were both ghost hunting enthusiasts. There is something really effective in a horror movie about making protagonists that are so relatable and likable people.

I like the fact that you look at both characters and how they are dealing with their lives. For me, I really felt invested in them and their relationship with each other and they were the kind of people I would like to be friends with. I especially liked Claire and every moment in which she would ring the bell on the front desk just to annoy Luke and just do … do it. Those little touches gave a lot of nuance to the film right there. They almost make you forget that this is a horror film. Almost.

The tone changes from light-hearted interactions and antics to something very creepy and disturbing and then … sad: ultimately so very sad. You see these very human characters pursue something in a very playful way and watch as this something seemingly becomes very serious, very dangerous and very real fast. And I am not just talking about the ghost-hunting either: but rather a divergence between these two characters that costs them. I find at the end that I really wish that didn’t happen to them. That was one of the strengths of Chernobyl Diaries–to have sympathetic characters–except unlike the stupidity in them, these two were really intelligent, if only somewhat more tragically curious and naive.

What the film lacks in blood and gore, it possesses in slow-mounting psychological terror and unexplained creepiness. The Innkeepers reminds me of the ambiance in Are You Afraid of the Dark? with finer tuning, three-dimensional characters and a plausible background made all the more terrifying by hints and moments of building paranormal activity: things made all the more disturbing in that you don’t know whether they exist outside the characters or in their minds. Either way, this film is both scary and tragic.

The Innkeepers gets a five out of five for an excellent story, pacing and brilliant character depictions and interactions. I could not recommend this film more highly than this.

Film Review: Sucker … PUNCH!

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I’d almost like to say that Sucker Punch actually sucker punched me, but you can’t claim to be sucker punched when you can pretty much see it coming.

So I watched this film the other day and I almost feel like just giving you my rating right now. What I can I tell you? It could have worked. It could have. All the components were there. You had this girl who was wrongfully put into an insane asylum by her stepfather who wanted her family’s money: and had her unofficially scheduled to be lobotomized to keep her silent about his dealings.

You had different realities going on after this in which you have the protagonist retreating into the fantasy that she was sold to a brothel where she’d learn to dance for the patrons there. You also had a few realities where this same protagonist is a bad-ass warrior who has to fight things that symbolize her inner demons and even has something of a guide: a man who is respectively a sage and a military commander. He is known as the Wise Man and has some pretty crisp, elegant, and pragmatic things to say with a proviso at the end that always comes after him stating, “Oh and one more thing …”

You also had other female protagonists who were also in the asylum, in the brothel and were in her teammates in the combat worlds she found herself in under the guidance of the Wise Man. One of the worlds the girls found themselves in was apparently a steampunk (though I would say dieselpunk) WWI.

Here is essentially a movie where you can play with realities and have some nice transitions between worlds. Here is a romp through the collective unconsciousness: through the subconscious of a girl who is probably being drugged and trying to save herself from a lobotomy in five days’ time. This could have been a movie of character development along with some fitting musical tracks,  flashy special effects and fantasy sequences.

Instead, it was just the good soundtracks and the fantasy sequences. A few other critics have actually stated something to the effect of being amazed at how bored they were during the fight scenes and such and I have to agree with them. They could have been cool. If the girls had been developed a lot more, it would have been.

You know, I can almost see how it could have been: like a warped dieselpunk psychological-Alice and Wonderland fairytale. I could see there being very clear, if somewhat distorted, plays between the different realities: even the point where you as the viewer might not be sure where one begins and one ends. Keeping in mind that the initial setting was in an exaggerated 1960s asylum would have been–and I suppose even is–a good start. I also think it would be fascinating to consider that a lot of the music that the protagonist is forced to dance to in the brothel reality does not even exist yet in her actual time line: which makes you wonder if what is construed as madness is something that goes beyond space and time.

Instead, what we have here is a video game with a very flimsy premise and attempt at depicting female empowerment: which did not work and I feel did the exact opposite. But the sad thing is: it could have worked. It could have been done if it had been done a little differently. For instance, in the beginning of the film itself instead of trying to depict a bunch of silent black and white sequences ala Sin City style, the film-makers–in my opinion–should have basically developed some character even then with a few verbal exchanges or what-not. I mean, even the “silent treatment” they were attempting to give us–a “show and don’t tell us” situation, could have worked for me if the body language and facial expressions of the characters weren’t so … over-exaggerated and melodramatic. It seriously made me wince to see that and I hoped it would improve as time went on.

The thing is, in creating this film, they followed a formula and a cycle. They had a quest, they had antagonists, heroines, items that needed to be found, and even a moral: which is that you have all the tools to take care of yourself you just need the will to use them and do what must be done. But it didn’t work. It just didn’t work.

And seriously? Naming the girls Blondie, Rocket, Sweet Pea, Amber and the protagonist Baby Girl made me wince. A lot.  You could argue that they are just monikers given in the brothel reality to these girls by patriarchal chauvinist forces, or that they were plays on Charlie’s Angels, but it still makes me wince. Their overly-fetishized little girl costumes did not help matters either. In fact, the way they were depicted in general wasn’t something I could really relate to or sympathize with. That, again, could have been done but it wasn’t. Also, Blue–their “owner”–for all he is a misogynist piece of garbage, and despite his moments of intelligence, really wasn’t that intelligent at all or consistent in how I would think he’d operate: especially when he doles out punishments. He might be a sadistic criminal, but I imagine he is also a pragmatic businessman and would have dealt with things a little more differently.

I do like the idea that he knew that in the brothel reality or fantasy that they were trying to escape and he figured it out, but that twist was never followed through because I’d assume the girls would adapt to it as well somehow. I don’t know how to phrase it beyond that. It just felt like a whole lot of flatness with special effects with a very forced “meaning” or “moral” stapled on at the very end and music sequence in the credits that has nothing to do with anything.

It just felt like a video game and honestly–if I wanted to see Alice with a machine gun with a similar psychological element–I’d probably play a game like American McGee’s Alice or its sequel Alice: Madness Returns. If you want to make a dark and gritty Alice story, make a dark and gritty Alice story or play one of the above games. But I’ll be fair: as a video game this film might have actually been better. If Snyder had created Suck Punch as a video game script and worked with other developers to make the game and then made a film from it, it might have been a lot better.

I guess since I am trying to be fair, it was his first original movie script and you can see these different elements coming together: but they just don’t make it in the spectacle that follows. I could also have seen this as a comic book first: with more development and time. I don’t know if that would have improved a lot about it, but with writing and time stories could have been made and maybe some essence might have been established along with form. Perhaps something along the spirit of David Mack’s excellent and insanely innovative Kabuki comics series might have been something interesting to see.

You might ask why I bothered to review this film at all given what I’ve said about it. I guess if I had to summarize it all under two words, it would be: could have. Although not exactly the same, after mentioning Kabuki I remembered a Noboru Iguchi film I saw at the Toronto After Dark film festival called RoboGeisha: the story of two sisters abducted and termed into geisha-assassin cyborgs. What I find really ironic is how even though it somewhat parodied Bandai’s Power Rangers, a lot of gore, and was in a lot of ways incredibly ridiculous, it laughed at itself and made you laugh with it. But not only did it do that, it got me invested in the characters. And while it didn’t have all of Sucker Punch‘s special effects or mien of grandeur, it was a lot more fun.

Oh, and one more thing: while I do think that Sucker Punch‘s heart might have tried to be in the right place (I appreciated that Baby Girl actually went into a fighting world when she danced to the music: something that I’ve visualized doing when I used to go to dance clubs myself), there was something about that just didn’t sit well with me. I’m glad I didn’t see it in theatres, though it has its entertainment value at times and I’ll give it a two out of five.

Creativity and Academia: The Glass-Bead Game That Never Ends

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ 3 Comments

It’s amazing–to me–that I forgot to talk about this at all in my review of Hermann Hesse’s The Glass-Bead Game. I was originally going to write this as an addendum to the piece, but then I realized that the issue I want to address actually covers some much broader ground.

One that that is always stressed in Hesse’s novel by the Castalian Order that developed the Game is that it is not their role to create new things. Castalians are not supposed to be artists, but scholars of a spiritual bent and–according to them–anything that comes from the Game is simply to be contemplated and there is great discouragement against changing the rules that create and make up the Game proper. Basically, the Game itself seems to have been developed from pre-existing knowledge and there is usually great resistance from the Order itself in altering any of the rules or guidelines that were made to create it.

However, it is not only this. As I said before, creativity apparently is discouraged in Castalians in general: but that is simply not true. At one point in his studies, Joseph Knecht is encouraged–like other developing students in his Order–to write creative pieces about what they could have been in their lives. Also, he makes many changes to the rules of the Game even before he is Magister Ludi and they are accepted. Knecht could–of course–be the exception due to his gifted nature and not the rule–but it goes further than that.

To combine different disciplines together to create different patterns of expression is creation. There is analysis and study involved, but there is a synthesis of the parts into something new. Therefore, even during Knecht’s time before his reforms and his demise, the Glass-Bead Game–a contemplation exercise of intellectuals and academics–is a creative venture.

It reminds me of why I chose to pursue the Humanities at my University and why I pursued them in the way that I did. I learned about a great many things to do with literature, philosophy, history, social theory, and even to an extent art and expression. My program was by its nature very interdisciplinary and it looked not only at how certain philosophies and conventions work, but what forces make them and why.

Humanities also encourages scholars or humanists (as they are apparently called) to apply a plurality of “lenses” or “frames of reference” to a particular subject. For instance, when looking at a book we would look at the history of the culture that it was written in, the philosophical movements that existed then, the potential other sources that might have influenced its creation, the writer’s life, and how that book influenced other books and other cultures even and what the implications of what that book says might mean and how it might have meant different things to different people. So instead of looking at it from one view or lens, the theory was that we were to look at a thing with different mental tools or perspectives. We are even encouraged to look at how those tools and “lenses” were created: and why they exist the way they currently are.

All of that can be really difficult to articulate and sum up into a few sentences. Indeed, when people asked me what my Major was and I told them it was Humanities, more often than not they didn’t know what I was talking about: or they had a very different understanding as to what the Humanities actually is. For instance, the University of Toronto’s Humanities is different from York University’s: in that the former has certain divisions of Humanities, while the latter has an entire program that combines all those elements together: or tries to.

The fact is, for me, it often seemed like my Program–and maybe even Humanities as I know it–seeks to justify its existence by trying to be a discipline like Science or English. Sometimes even I feel it is just a “jack-of-all-trades while mastering none” perspective or that I personally just possess a whole lot of “party-cocktail trivia” and nothing more compared to the specialists of different fields. Personally, to make a gaming digression, I think of it as multi-classing and spreading certain dots or numbers of Experience Points out that–while it may take a while–will eventually pay off a very well-rounded character.

My role-playing game analogy and tangent aside, sometimes I felt like–just with the Glass-Bead Game of Castalia, the Humanities is very stringent on its guidelines of scholarship and what scholarship is because it is a “relatively young” discipline as we understand it and it wants legitimacy. The thing is I think both are already legitimate and allowing for flexibility in what scholarship and academia can be–by allowing for change–they distinguish themselves. I know sometimes I really wanted to say that I shouldn’t have felt like I had to apologize for my choice of Program and–more specifically–the Humanities shouldn’t have to apologize for what it is.

As an interesting side-note, apology originally was derived from the concept of defense: defending your perspective through logical debate known as argument. I also think there are many other ways to make your point instead of being defensive or not testing what your discipline–or your medium–can do. Film and comics were very similar to that regard in that both wanted to “fit in” and be accepted but they are different. I know I’m making a lot of very potentially bad analogies here in equating disciplines with media, but in my mind they are very similar if not one and the same.

What I love about the Humanities is that it let me put so many things together–it let me be analytic and synthetic–and I think I had more opportunity to do so in that discipline than anywhere else. I got to look at my favourite authors and writings. I got to analyze some of my own stories in a final paper. I even wrote a comic book script as a final assignment in another course: using my knowledge of the course material and comics media. I know York has an Interdisciplinary Studies Program as well where students are encouraged to do independent work and even create art as their final project.

As you can see, I feel very passionately about this. I think that gathering and critiquing knowledge is important, but that once you try to look at the why of something–to contemplate it and its application to yourself … to look at the human in it–creating something can be just as important. I like that my Program allowed me that freedom, for the most part, and it’s just amazing how The Glass-Bead Game applies to so many of these issues that I’d been thinking about for a very long time now.

I firmly believe that when you make a work of any kind, you create knowledge: and that viewpoint challenges not only what scholarship is, but what art is as well. There was a time in history when apparently there was no division between what was art and what was science. They were all apparently unified under Philosophy along with a whole other lot of disciplines we separate and specialize now. I’m obviously not saying that other disciplines are not as important or that their distinctions should be eliminated: specializations can be very important because they focus on a particular subject or task quite efficiently and with necessary detail.

But I like the differences in the discipline I chose and that potential for growth that I always felt there. It certainly feels like it fit my mindset: at least at the time. The best part is that even when school is out, you still keep learning about the Humanities. You can still keep making things. The Game doesn’t end after you graduate college or university. It doesn’t end when you leave Castalia for the unknown. You keep playing and, you know, I think that is a very good thing.

Film Review: Inglourious Basterds

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been making a lot of reviews lately, I know, but this film has made itself a special place in my heart. I also made a reference to it in one of my earlier entries–with regards to Marvel’s Nick Fury–and I guess compelled to actually say something about the film now that I actually watched the thing.

If I could sum up Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds into two words, it would be these:

Fuck History.

If I could get a mug or zippo lighter in the spirit of Garth Ennis’ Preacher with those words, I would definitely consider it. I think what I really liked about Tarantino’s film is the fact that it plays on your expectations–usually well ingrained film or plot-expectations–and then says “Nope,” and does something else entirely. There is something really exaggerated and almost lampoonish about Inglourious Basterds: from the portrayal of its characters, to the garishness of its iconography and all the way to the messed up situations that occur within it.

But while there are moments of hilarity–yes hilarity in a movie about a group of Jewish-American soldiers sent to kill, torture, and destroy Nazi soldiers in 1944–it is not a comedy or a parody. It is quite serious. It is a film that shows what happens to the best laid plans: especially in a war or an enemy infiltration situation and how quickly some interesting characters can die. It illustrates how evil wins when good men have their families threatened. In addition, it also shows how the “good guys” can be immensely but necessarily cruel in war, and how even an evil, remorseless antagonist can be one of the most captivating characters in the entire film.

There is something very … comic book action hero-like about this film and how it is put together. Tarantino himself stated that he wanted to create a World War II movie over the backdrop and ambiance of a spaghetti Western. There is definitely a resonance of Kill Bill in some of the seemingly ad hoc situations that arise in this film: complete with contemporary music set around a period piece and lots of gore and dead Nazis.

But I definitely think about super-hero comics when I think about this film now in retrospect. Hitler seems to have something of a cape, the American soldiers have a very brash gung-ho Americanism thing going on, the Nazi antagonist is very Machiavellian and over the top, and there is a very clear revenge scenario going on here. It feeds into your sense of blood-lust and satisfaction in watching something “evil” die. At the same time though, Tarantino subverts this. For all the protagonists portray the Nazis in the film as evil, and often most of the people in here are relatively two-dimensional–there are still moments of humanity from the “bad guys” that almost make you feel sorry for them being scalped, or having swastikas carved into their heads, or, you know, killed.

As for those people who think that this, well, obviously not historically inaccurate, consider my reference to action hero comics. Was it accurate for Superman to beat the crap out of Hitler? Was it also accurate for Captain America to have a few swings at him? Probably not, but I’m sure there was definite satisfaction in reading that and these comics–the result of war propaganda and good art–translated into Tarantino’s film very nicely.

But all that is either surface or merely part of the film. There is another aspect as well: more of the details. The multi-lingual segments of the film carried me through and gave me some more of the ambiance of that time. It left it no less charged. And then there is a meta-thematic element: that of film itself.

It is no coincidence that the build-up and the climax of Inglourious Basterds takes place in a film theatre, is centred around the viewing of a propaganda film, is subverted by a “revenge film” and whose antagonists are ultimately destroyed by film–by a moving sequential account of history ignited by the flames of war–itself. Because while many of the events in this movie did not happen, and many of the characters didn’t even exist, I feel like that the enemy’s “death by film” symbolizes a much greater artistic achievement over fascism: that when you seek to destroy something with art, art can ultimately change and destroy you as well.

On the television, Inglourious Basterds didn’t get any stars–which is a shame–but that only suits its personality. It’s not here for the glory, and it is not ornate or nice, but definitely has a lot of very kick-ass–literal and otherwise–moments. I think that I will give this film a five out of five.

Film Review: The Chernobyl Diaries: A Foregone Conclusion

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

Yes, there are going to be spoilers.

So yesterday, after my lengthy digression on The Avengers, I went to see a film I’d been intrigued by for a while. The premise of Chernobyl Diaries caught my imagination almost immediately following my viewing of the first preview. Pripyat was a city in Ukraine founded in 1970 to house the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s workers and their families until the disaster of 1986. The city–and most of the possessions of its inhabitants–was abandoned almost immediately following a flood of deadly radiation into the area.

Think about it: somewhere out there in Ukraine is a city still stuck in the mid-late 80s Communist period–a place that could have easily seen all three of George Lucas’ Star Wars original trilogy like everyone else before its doom–gathering dust, rust, pools of water, weeds, and trees growing out of and into buildings. It is a ghost city where abandoned swing-sets still sway in the winds, old photographs lie on the floors in abandoned homes, and a ferris wheel still stands to celebrate a May Day Festival that never happened. There could even be collector’s items there–such as a tattered first issue of Action Comics–that would prove just as poisonous to a would-be collector as Kryptonite is to Superman. In a lot of ways, it is more sad than creepy. There is so much tragedy there–soaked as indelibly into the stones as the radiation that has doomed it–that it makes you wonder why it happened: makes you wish that it never did. When I first saw Pripyat and the Chernobyl reactor looming ominously in the distance, I wondered what it would have been like had the disaster not happened. But that is neither here nor there: just like legacy that Chernobyl has left us, or that we left it.

If any place could be considered cursed by human action and hubris over Nature, this area would be one of those places. When I came into this film, I thought that the protagonists would be dealing with psychic manifestations of the ghosts within Chernobyl and Pripyat–of the loss of potential and life made incarnate–while at the same time making you–the viewer–wonder if any of it is truly happening and if its not the protagonists having hallucinations by the slow encroaching inevitable horror of man-made radiation poisoning.

Instead, we have a different movie. Extreme Tourism is something I have heard of and I also know that there have been many tours near Chernobyl and possibly into the area even before this film was made. I was really surprised. I always thought that the place would be a complete wasteland, but evidently Nature is more powerful than humanity. The protagonists were young–and I personally think stupid to risk themselves to radiation poisoning despite what their guide said about two hours being a reasonable amount of exposure–but they were all likable: which I’ve not seen happen often in horror movies these days. It actually made me sad knowing that even if they got out of this, they were still going to die from radiation and cancer. That in itself is horrifying enough.

The film plays on three fears and layers them well. The first is the radiation that will slowly kill them if they do not leave and even if they do, it will still be in them. I winced every time they picked something up in the city or dipped their hands into presumably irradiated water like their guide Uri did. The geiger counter they had in their possession as it crackled louder and louder and started to beep was like a timer to their death. Then there were the wild, crazed dogs that lived in the area that they had to avoid: a case of feral Nature turning on protagonists that had few resources to help them.

The main characters had the advantage in their general solidarity, if nothing else, and even when that solidarity was challenged by fear and the realization that they would not be able to leave the city before their two hours were up was offset by their mutual need to survive and their basic empathy as fellow travelers. But then: we have the creatures.

The creepy–the truly creepy thing–about the creatures is that we barely even see them. We just have hints of them: things from the corner of the eye, a distant photograph, a still smoldering fire, a limping shape behind a table in an underground room that hints at deformity, a recording of a car being turned over and people being taken, dead eaten soldiers, a sole, solitary little girl with her back to the protagonists, a flash of a multitude of distorted faces at the end and not much else. It’s as though the director of this film observed an age-old horror genre convention in not revealing what the monster looks like. The unknown is the most terrifying aspect of horror: especially as it comes for and consumes you.

In that sense, for all the trappings of modernism around it, Chernobyl Diaries is a classic horror story: relying less on sex, gore and spectacle and more on a slow, mounting, creepy horror: with the gothic romanticism and terrible majesty of a Nature have reclaimed civilization, a contamination for which there is no cure and little hope for surviving with each passing hour, and–lastly–the presence of monsters and the unknown lurking never too far away in the dark. All of three primary fears are interlinked and even interchangeable. After all, it is no coincidence that at the end of the film the creatures are referred to as “patients”: robbed of individuality by their nature, sick, and no longer even human. It was a film that started out slow–exceedingly so–and then became fast-paced with characters dying at an alarmingly accelerated rate.

I can see why the above elements–combined with the fact that the “diaries” part of Chernobyl Diaries barely plays any role in the film–might make modern horror and movie critics pause and heap negative reviews on it, but if you are a classical horror reader or viewer, you can definitely appreciate the grim fatalism–the inevitability–of the three-fold fear and its triumph over human curiosity and common decency that lies at the heart of this film. I give Chernobyl Diaries a four out of five.

Film Review: The Avengers and their Mythology Revisited

~ matthewkirshenblatt ~ Leave a comment

There be spoilers here. You’ve been warned.

I wrote a very short review of The Avengers film a little while ago, but in light of much more detailed reviews and analyses: such as the relationship between genii Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, and Loki as master manipulator and challenger of the once and future geek status quo I thought that I might expand on some things a little more and maybe even respond to a few of these articles as well.

Remember, this is a spoiler alert: if you have not watched this film–and you should–then you have again been duly warned.

Avengers really reminded me of a lot of the lore that I used to read from Marvel cards and it totally played on the fandom that has generated around the Marvel universe and the superheroes that make up the Avengers team for decades. Again, I was at somewhat of a disadvantage myself in viewing this film because I have not seen Thor, or Captain America. Unlike Ex Urbe in the second link I posted, I knew that this wasn’t an extension of the great Ragnarok event that plagues the Nordic gods and it deals with the Marvel comics mythology instead: unfortunately I have been pretty rusty to that regard and having not been there in a very long or consistent time.

Each character was bang-on with regards to their comics incarnations as far as I remember. But like I said, I really like how they were played for the most part. If Captain America had been created in our time, he would been seen as a very transparent and tasteless living embodiment of propaganda. I know that during his Death in the comics world, there was a whole thing about selecting a new Captain America and showing just how different that Captain in our time would have been from Steve Rogers we know from WWII.

The Captain America in the film was played as a legendary hero–a relic of a certain moral structure that not even many people in his time or country embodied–and I like how he is seen as a piece of history: which for all intents and purposes he is. He is also still a human being who–while he follows orders–does not follow them blindly. After all, even after ages of suspended animation, Cap is not like the enemy soldiers he used to fight during the second World War. In fact, he makes reference to that time at one point in a very poignant but quick way that devolves into another battle.

Tony Stark is still a wise-ass that always thinks about contingencies, while Thor is still a strong being yet also very noble and cautious. I like that portrayal of the Asgard: because while his mythological archetype was generally stupid and little more than an over-sized brute that would have rivaled the Hulk in mentality and action, the Marvel Thor that we see is a being that wants to protect others and actually thinks about the implications of his advanced people’s presence and technology on the people of Earth.

I can’t say much about Black Widow and Hawk-Eye except to say that they seemed more like secondary characters compared to the others. I do like, however, how Loki plays on them: how he plays on both of them and you see as a viewer just how–for all everyone involved are supposedly superheroes–they are not all innocent. Certainly Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury is as no-nonsense and as much of an “inglourious basterd” as ever: though a little more refined than the comics Fury (who I believe was a contemporary of Wolverine and Cap during WWII and he was the one who fought H.Y.D.R.A. instead of Cap) and in some ways very much more underhanded for the “greater good.”

I think though that the performances that really got me were Bruce Banner and Loki. First, let me deal with Dr. Banner. I have in fact seen both relatively recent films created around the Hulk, yet this film does something the others really don’t. Avengers looks at Bruce. You notice how I don’t say the Hulk and there is a reason why I do this in particular. In almost every other bit of media–film or otherwise–the green gamma beast is brought out for his spectacle effect and Bruce Banner simply tries to contain him. But here we see Bruce Banner as a person. We see a brilliant but haunted man who does not want to cause destruction and pain. He has suffered and yet despite this still tries to help people with his knowledge. He is a solitary person by his own perceived necessity if not by choice and in a lot of ways he is a very sad man.

A good portion of the film has people walking egg-shells around him and thinking they have contingencies in dealing with the “green nuclear djinn in a human bottle”: not realizing just how strong Banner actually is and how many “contingencies” he himself has undergone. Beth in her own review shows that the only person who doesn’t treat Banner as an accident waiting to happen or a potential resource is Tony Stark and she gives very compelling parallels between the two: to the point where I remembered Tony Stark taking a drink before dealing with Loki and actually wincing at that segment alone more than anything else in the film. They are both brilliant men that have their own demons. and they can relate to each other. However the difference is that Bruce Banner has a lot more control over the Hulk than people even think.

Personally, I think there is a difference between Banner being agitated enough to release him and purposefully bringing his alter-ego out. When he does the latter, the Hulk is in a lot more control and in fact–when it comes down to it–there is no difference between Bruce Banner and the Hulk. They are and always have been the same person. “The Other Guy,” that kept Bruce Banner from killing himself, is not just anger but a fury for passion and life and ironically as the film progresses you see Banner actually almost coming to terms with that. It is no coincidence how in the comics, Bruce Banner changes into the Hulk permanently yet manages to keep all of his intellect along with the righteous fury. Even in the movie, Banner says that the secret to controlling his power is that he is “always angry.”

And then you have the threat that brings all of these disparate beings together: Loki. Loki himself, like Thor, has his precedent in the Nordic mythological cycle. Loki is a trickster god and an agent of chaos. He is not biologically related to the Asgard deities but instead has Jotnar (or frost giant) blood in him. While Loki begins as a mischievous prankster, he ends up creating Ragnarok: the twilight of the gods. He transforms from trickster to destroyer. Perhaps in Thor, this role is prevalent as well in its own Marvel incarnation, but I want to talk about him in the film: something that I only alluded to in my earlier article on this Blog.

Loki feeds off of chaos and he is not an overt player. Ex Urbe really goes into immense detail with regards to Loki in the film, but let me just reiterate something I said in my last article in that he plays a really good game. He manipulates and feeds on the power of discord that the Avengers feel towards each other. His very presence caused their assembling and exacerbated the cracks between them. In many ways, he arranged it so that they were almost as dangerous as he and his allies were. As to how far his foresight goes–if he knew they and they particular would be chosen to deal with him–is another matter entirely.

As I said, Ex Urbe really looks at how clever Loki is. You notice, for instance, he barely ever fights and he likes to make his enemies think that they can always beat him. The moment Black Widow thought her interrogation strategy had worked on him, I knew she was screwed. Never try to trick a trickster or play their own game because they will beat you with experience. He sat back and let Captain America, Iron Man and Thor fight each other. And then, when he seemed to have failed in his mission to conquer Earth, he conveniently gets captured by Thor and they go to Asgard with the cube away from the wrath of the trickster god’s vengeful allies. All and all, I think he was right to postpone and then later ask for that drink.

I also really like the part where Loki is in Germany and he asks everyone to bow down to him and one old German man won’t who states, “Not to men like you,” and then later adds, “There are always men like you.” The thing that you need to understand is that Nordic mythology really played a powerful role in German culture. Others, including Richard Wagner, played off of these archetypes in the collective unconsciousness of the German and Germanic people. Wagner was also a really well-known anti-Semite and his operas were well loved by various members of the Nazi Party later on. Nietzsche referred to a figure of the “actor” or “demagogue in music.” Looking at Loki forcing everyone to bow in front of him–with the compelling words and presence of a trickster and “god”–with all of that historical resonance the immediate background and that old man standing up to him really put chills down my back.

In this, Ex Urbe might seem wrong in stating that Loki is attempting to help humans and gods beyond the status quo: that he is just another fascist power. Of course, there is another way of looking at this in an analytical sense: that by posing as a dictator (and one really bad at ruling apparently and inefficient in other ways), he is making humanity challenge him and the established order of things. Remember that the role of a trickster deity in mythology is to challenge the status quo and subvert authority. A trickster also helps humanity by giving it something that can potentially destroy itself and stealing it from the divine order, but also creating an order with it. In addition, trickster gods can take a lot of physical punishment–a lot of it–and they almost seem to goad others into delivering it to make them think they have the upper-hand. In this way, Loki is almost a comic mockery of the things he rebels against, a Wagnerian parody and by serving as that cardboard cut-out effigy he helps to subvert it. So perhaps in that way, Loki is more like Nietzsche’s Zarathustra than his “demagogue in music.”

Then there is Captain America’s reply to that–which actually plays well into the above idea: if Loki is leading him and others by the nose. There is also something else Captain America says afterwards. When Black Widow refers to Loki and Thor as virtual gods, he states, “There’s only one God, ma’am. And I don’t think he dresses like that.”

While this last quote can be seen as very culturally chauvinistic, because there are many different beliefs out there, it definitely shows Cap as a relic of his time: as someone who views the world in a certain way. At the same time though, if looked at from a different perspective, Cap could be seen as stating that even these perceived gods and superheroes–least of all himself–are not above a greater morality or law of some kind. He interprets that as God. The others interpret it as something else. Loki probably interprets it as freedom of power and chaos.

Of course, there are other concepts of absolute powers or incarnations of concepts as well. Long after the film is over and Loki is captured, you find out that the invaders were working with someone behind the scenes. The leader of the invaders tells his real master that invading Earth will only bring destruction and Death. Notice how I capitalize *Death.* Neil Gaiman was not the only writer who created incarnations of certain facts of life in anthropomorphic figures. In the Marvel Universe, there are beings called Embodiments and while you do not see Death at the end, you do see the being that … serves her female incarnation. And if you have read the comics, you know who I am talking about and you begin to realize that Loki is not the only being that plans things out. This is the Marvel plots-within-plots structure in film form, social commentary and mythological cycles of sequential drama all done well by Joss Whedon.

I think that I am going to leave this off right here. All and all I really loved The Avengers. I never even thought of a movie based on them and it worked very well. The mythology–both comics based and older–created excellent resonance along with Whedon’s trademark snappy dialogue. I also look forward to its sequel and I wonder … just what was that small dagger that Loki stabbed Thor with towards the end of the film? And just what role will Death and her harbinger play in the scheme of things? I hope to find out soon enough.

ETA: Here is an obligatory and intriguing article by M. Leary on gods in Avengers and Marvel. Excelsior!