This weekend I watched The American–more on that later. The trailer for The Social Network, the Mark Zuckerberg bio pic, preceded the film. You’ve probably seen it, but maybe take a couple of minutes to watch it again:
The trailer that immediately followed was for Catfish. Check out the similarities:
I like that it trades on our familiarity with The Social Network trailer, and that distributors have arranged to run the two films’ trailers back to back.
Will Catfish be a good movie? I have no idea. It looks like it might get seriously Blair Witchy in the last act. But I am intrigued.
The other day, somebody sent me a link to fflick (myself, I’d have capitalized the first ‘f’). It’s a site which (I assume) uses language analysis to aggregate movie reviews off of Twitter. They present this data as a rating out of 100 for any movie, and enable you to just check out reviews by your Twitter friends.
I wondered how accurate these ratings were. And, of course, I saw a chance to make a chart.
I compared the fflick ratings from the top ten box office films this week to those of another crowd-sourced site, IMDB, as well as two professional review aggregation sites, Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes. Here’s what I came up with–apologies for the goofy X-axis labeling. As usual, cliquer pour agrandir l’image:
I know that’s a pretty small data set, but it’s a start. It’s actually interesting how close the four data sets are. I’d guess that the disparity in Charlie St. Cloud can be explained by two factors: uncritical teenage lust for Zac Efron, and the movie’s newness. It’s also not surprising that the critics are generally less enthusiastic about a movie than the general public. Still, fflick seems to do a pretty decent job of distilling Twitter’s cinematic zeitgeist.
This language analysis is a very deep vein in social media channels like Twitter. Marketers, researchers and hackers across the globe will be keen to explore what people love and hate, whether it’s movies, music or recliners.
In 2216, theatre historians will study David Mamet’s Glengarry Glen Ross as one of the most important plays of the second half of the twentieth century. You can find its influence in everything from Reservoir Dogs to Seinfeld to Mad Men. It’s an exquisite tale of salesmen trying to sell each other. Or, to put it more crassly, it’s a bunch of guys demonstrating that you can, in fact, bullshit a bullshitter.
Here’s the plot summary, courtesy of Wikipedia:
The play shows parts of two days in the lives of four desperate Chicago real estate agents who are prepared to engage in any number of unethical, illegal actsâ€â€from lies and flattery to bribery, threats, intimidation, and burglaryâ€â€to sell undesirable real estate to unwilling prospective buyers.
That sounds kind of banal, but it’s Mamet’s gift to craft remarkable tension out of everyday circumstances. I just saw his newest play, Race, on Broadway. The entire play is more or less in real time, featuring two lawyers and a law student discussing whether or not to take a case. And yet–just like Glengarry Glen Ross–you’re enthralled after six lines of crackling dialogue. Mamet is also a master of power dynamics, and so is an actor’s playwright.
On Wednesday night, I was invited to attend the Arts Club’s production of this contemporary classic–an appropriate phrase, even if it has been exhausted of its meaning. It was a very strong show–the best I’ve seen at the Arts Club for some time. Director Michael Shamata (over from the Belfry) and the performers have strong material to work with, and they handle it well in front of naturalistic, functional sets by Kevin McAllister.
The sets were full of subtle details, like an air conditioner above a door or pipes in the ceiling. I loved how the round tables in the first act setting, a Chinese restaurant, are inexplicably hinged down at the front. I guess the line they create reflects the proscenium arch of the stage (and a faux arch of the restaurant), and they draw our eyes upwards. They don’t make any practical sense, yet the decision feels right. Both photos are by Emily Cooper, and, as always, click to enlarge:
Much of the buzz around this production is focused on Eric McCormack, he of Will & Grace fame. Bringing famous film and television actors to the stage can have mixed results, but McCormack apparently drew on his years spent as a young actor at Stratford.
McCormack plays Ricky Roma, the macho alpha dog in the office. Al Pacino played this role in the great 1992 movie of the same name, and McCormack seems to occasionally be channeling the elder actor’s physicality in the role (perhaps that’s inevitable, given Roma’s slick machismo). Still, there were a few minutes where I forgot that I was watching a famous TV actor, and that’s to his credit.
The whole cast was excellent, actually. The script is ridiculously pacey and dense, and the performers didn’t hit every single note in it. Mamet’s dialogue is very challenging (that’s why when he directs movies, he tends to use a lot of the same actors), and the cast will probably discover more of the script’s tiny details and cadences after a few shows.
There’s really very little not to like about this production–it makes for a funny, gripping night at the theatre.
Glengarry Glen Ross runs through August 22 at the Stanley Theatre. Go here to buy tickets.
A Few End Notes
A few vaguely related notes:
Unusually, the production’s second act is considerably longer than its first. Keep this in mind if you drink a lot at intermission.
I’ve recommended some of them before, but you pretty much can’t go wrong with any film Mamet writes and directs. My favourite is Spartan (pretty much, as it happens, Kristen Bell’s film debut), but I’d also recommend (in descending order) The Spanish Prisoner (Campbell Scott is, I think, one of Hollywood’s more under appreciated actors), Heist and Redbelt. Of course, there’s a bunch of great movies written by Mamet but directed by others, such as Wag the Dog and Ronin.
There’s a monologue in Glengarry Glen Ross that, to my mind, is the finest sales pitch of the last hundred years. I haven’t heard them all, but I don’t think I’ve heard better. Pacino performs it (rated PG for language) with exquisite attention to detail:
UPDATE: I contacted the show’s director, Michael Shamata, to ask him about the tables. He explained that there were two reasons:
1. every Chinese restaurant that i have ever been in has drop-leaf tables
2. it allowed us to bring the booths as far downstage as possible and still allow the front row to see the actors
We lived in Ireland for about two years. While there, we had plenty of guests come and visit us. We usually met them at the airport and took a cab into town. The guests and Julie would pile into the back seat, and I’d sit up front with the driver. I’d chat with the driver about football or traffic or whatever.
On more than one occasion, our newly-arrived guests would be baffled by the conversation. They couldn’t understand a single thing the taxi driver was saying. They were inevitably from the north side of Dublin, and had a particularly thick accent. Having lived in the city for a year, our ears had become familiar with the accent, so we could usually have a conversation.
It’s about two kids from the north side of Dublin who run away from home.
Despite the fact that the kids are speaking English, the trailer is subtitled. And, amusingly, the (I assume) American distributor got a word in the trailer wrong. At about the 56-second mark, according to the subtitles, one of the leads says (in response to Stephen Rea, apparently channeling Bob Dylan) “we’re actually running away”. In truth, what she says is “we’re after running away”. ‘After’ here is used to indicate the immediate past, in place of, according to Wikipedia, the usual pluperfect usage.
The movie was released in Ireland about a year and a half ago. I suspect that the film’s distributors are hoping that this movie will be another Once. It’s interesting to compare the original Irish trailer to the North American one:
It feels a little more sinister, doesn’t it? A little rougher around the edges. You can also hear some other dialogue without subtitles.
I was also amused to see an open-air ice rink featured in the movie:
These synthetic ice rinks have popped up around Christmas time in Dublin over the last decade. When we lived in Dublin’s IFC neighbourhood, they laid one directly outside our apartment’s door. When we lived there, Ireland had zero ice arenas, so it was amusing to watch the kids try to figure out this new thing called ‘skating’, and on the less-forgiving fake ice as well.
Film-making is such a marathon. It must be a chore for the director and performers to return to promoting the movie more than two years after finishing it.
“This Movie is Broken” is two movies in one. It’s a rockumentary of Broken Social Scene’s free live show on Toronto’s waterfront in July, 2009. It’s also a simple romance between Bruno (Greg Calderone) and Caroline (Georgina Reilly). They’re two young Torontonians spending one last night together at the show before Caroline leaves to study in Paris.
It’s an interesting, modestly experimental (I’m stealing that phrase from somewhere, but I can’t find the source now) conceit from famed Canadian director Bruce McDonald. He’s kind of a structuralist, I think. He routinely reminds us that we are, indeed, watching a movie, using different visual treatments or effects (you can seem examples in the trailer) to shape a film’s tone.
I like the idea, in theory, of re-imagining the concert film as a series of scenes integrated into a narrative film. Unfortunately, I found neither the concert nor Bruno and Caroline’s story particularly compelling.
Yell Theatrically Into the Microphone
Though I acknowledge their popularity as a respected central Canadian super-group, I’m not a Broken Social Scene fan. While their stage performance had a warm, friendly vibe, I found their music pretty banal. There’s a sameness to the long, jammy, guitar-driven songs, and, with the exception of Julie Penner on violin, I didn’t hear any particular artistry in their playing or, in particular, their singing. They seem to subscribe to The Arcade Fire school of live performance: get a bunch of people on stage and get them to yell theatrically into the microphone. It’s decidedly unsubtle. This Letterman performance demonstrates some of what I’m talking about.
On an unrelated note, the current version of the band could be renamed Unwise Choices in Facial Hair. The hipster ‘staches and neck beards were on full display.
The film’s story is thin and unfun. Bruno’s pursuit of Caroline is kind of inexplicable, as she comes off as, well, bitchy. She seems to only consent to the data because Bruno lies and claims that he can get back stage passes (when they eventually do, it’s through an entirely unconvincing bit of pleading). Their night proceeds in, really, the most banal way possible.
If you’re a Broken Social Scene fan, then you’ll enjoy the concert footage. Otherwise, give this movie a miss.
But hey, other people quite liked the film. Katherine Monk, somewhat inexplicably, claims that the music had “so many sonic elements and emotional colours” and that the love story showed “the breathless excitement of mutual attraction”. I saw neither.
Elvis Stole the Show
A quick footnote. I didn’t write about it back in February, but I saw a lot of the Broken Social Scene artists playing in a Cultural Olympiad show entitled “The Neil Young Project”. A bunch of indie artists covered Neil Young songs. I was surprised and a little dismayed at how ordinary the evening was–most of the younger performers just didn’t generate much energy or enthusiasm on-stage.
Their performances were brought into sharp contrast when Elvis Costello came on and just ripped it up with “Cowgirl in the Sand†and “Cinnamon Girlâ€Â. As Alexander Varty at the Straight said, “the crowd, which had been drifting toward torpidity, rose to its feet and stayed there for the rest of the night.”.
That’s apropos of not very much–maybe just that I’ve been underwhelmed by Broken Social Scene twice now.
I recently sent off this note to Cinemark Holdings Inc., the corporation that operates Cinemark Tinseltown here in Vancouver, along with nearly 5000 other theatres in North and Central America.
To whom it may concern,
This weekend, I planned to attend a movie at your Vancouver cinema, Cinemark Tinseltown, with three of my friends. Wanting to ensure that we got tickets, I planned to purchase them on your website. During this process, I noticed that Cinemark charges a $1.00 service charge per ticket when I buy them online.
At a $12 ticket price, that works out to an 8% premium. This surprised me, as it surely costs your organization much less money to sell me an online ticket–you incur no staffing or printing costs–than to sell me one in person. In an ideal world, all of your patrons would buy their tickets at home. Why, then, are you charging me extra to make your life easier?
Your ludicrous service fee convinced my friends and I to attend a film at a Cineplex theatre instead. They charge no service fees for online ticket purchases. I was delighted to give them my money. Can you guess where I’ll spend my movie-going dollars in the future?
Though I’m interested in the results, I usually don’t watch awards shows. I noticed, via Twitter’s trending topics, that the Golden Globes were on TV last night. I vaguely knew that the Globes were operated by a group called the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA). Who are these people, I wondered? Here’s what the Inteweb taught me:
THE HFPA only has 95 members. Compare that to the ‘Academy’ of the Academy Awards, which currently clocks in at about 6000 voting members.
The membership mostly comes from the West. There are, oddly, three members from Egypt and five from Japan.
Canada is represented by Noemia Young, Ray Arco and Dagmar Dunlevy. I’ll admit to never having heard of any of these people. They’re certainly not household names of Canadian entertainment journalism.
I gather the Globes are quite influential in the run-up to the Academy Awards, which in turn can have a huge impact on the long term prospects of a movie’s revenues. It’s striking that less than 100 people have that much economic power. They must get simply inundated by PR people for the months before the event. The whole thing feels vaguely like a racket.
Current HFPA members include real-estate agents, car salesmen, showbiz publicists, hairdressers and even a few journalists. All that is required to maintain membership is permanent residence in Southern California (so much for “foreign”) and a mere four published articles per year, often in obscure publications that aren’t freely disclosed.
In theatre school, one of my profs always said that “directing is 70% casting”. If you cast skilled, compelling performers, they’re going to make you look good. If you cast poorly, then you’re already behind the eight ball before you begin rehearsals.
Lately I’ve been thinking of writing an article (or maybe just starting a wiki page so that I can gather opinions) about what good acting is. I think we often say “oh, he’s a great actor” without really understanding what we mean.
In thinking about that article, I’m also interested in the relationship between a film’s director and its cast. This week I saw Invictus, Clint Eastwood’s new film about Nelson Mandela’s role in South Africa’s improbable run at the 1995 World Cup of Rugby. Simply put, it’s not a very good movie. The screenplay is simplistic in its approach to the complexities of a newly post-Apartheid South Africa, and Eastwood gets the pacing all wrong. He was, to my mind, simply the wrong director to make this film.
I bring up Invictus because Eastwood sometimes casts untrained or under-qualified actors in smaller roles in his films. This was the case with Gran Torino, and there are some examples in this film as well. Eastwood may also not be a particularly good director of actors (working with actors, I gather, is only one of the many, many things a film director does). In both films, I found the non-actors incredibly distracting. I can’t understand Eastwood’s decision, as the non-actors are glaringly obvious and, to my mind, detract from his films.
Acting Like a Frozen Fish
Here’s another example of a director’s impact on an actor’s performance. I recently saw New Moon (the newest Twilight movie) and Adventureland. Both are 2009 movies starring Kristen Stewart.
After seeing New Moon, the consensus was that (among many other faults) the performances were all dismal. Ms. Stewart swims through the murky film like a frozen fish, an unresponsive vortex that sucks the energy out of every scene she’s in (and this is a film without much energy to spare).
However, having seen Kristen Stewart in Adventureland (and also Panic Room, come to think of it) I see that she’s capable of more. She’s no Cate Blanchett, but those films indicated that she was at least a competent, watchable performer. So what gives?
I blame Chris Weitz, the director of New Moon and the rest of the production team. New Moon is an awful movie, beginning to end, and I must assume that extends to Mr. Weitz’s work with the actors.
There is an interesting alternative hypothesis, though. It stems from the apparent lack of description Ms. Stewart’s character receives in the novels:
First off, the author creates a main character which is an empty shell. Her appearance isn’t described in detail; that way, any female can slip into it and easily fantasize about being this person. I read 400 pages of that book and barely had any idea of what the main character looked like; as far as I was concerned she was a giant Lego brick. Appearance aside, her personality is portrayed as insecure, fumbling, and awkward – a combination anyone who ever went through puberty can relate to. By creating this “empty shell,” the character becomes less of a person and more of something a female reader can put on and wear. Because I forgot her name (I think it was Barbara or Brando or something like that), I’m going to refer to her as “Pants” from here on out.
Perhaps the filmmakers are trying to extend this blank slate to the movies? What do you think?
