"Grease" and "The Wizard of Oz" get the New Media Treatment

I wanted to share these videos because 1. I love them and 2. I think they are interesting examples of how something can live on in popular culture in ways that were likely never expected or anticipated of the original creators.  This evolution keeps them fresh and gives long standing fans another opportunity to see a favorite text while potentially introducing a whole new generation to these classic films.

The first clip is the song "Summer Lovin'" from 1978's Grease.  The big change here, however, is that it is now in stop-motion lego animation.  I've provided the original clip as well so you can see just how accurate the animation is to it's original.

This clip is called "Mellow Brick Road (Wizard of Oz Remix)".  In addition to the postmodern animation, the creators have taken all original music and spoken audio clips to create a soundtrack to the story that everyone already knows so well.  Similar to Grease, it now gets a modern and fresh treatment which breathes new life into something that has been around for over 70 years.

Pixar's "Brave"

This is the trailer for Pixar's Brave which comes out next summer. The tease doesn't offer much, but I am excited about the little it does show:

1. A female lead.
2. Takes place in Scotland.
3. It's from Pixar, so it's gonna be great.



Enjoy!

Best Movie Lines

Here is a compilation of 100 great lines from movies.  I think they got most of them, although a few classics are missing.  Overall it's great.  Can you think of any others you'd have liked to see?

True Blood Season 4

True Blood anyone?!  I don’t know about you, but I’m totally psyched for the new season.  Last Fall I caught up on all three seasons in a row (as is apparently becoming my thing: Lost and Sons of Anarchy have also come into my repertoire that way.  Thank you Netflix and Hulu!).  Watching shows this way has it’s pros and cons.  On the one hand its great because I don’t have to wait for weeks or months between episodes.  On the other hand, it’s sort of like cramming for a test – you have all the info while you are mired in it, but once it’s over all is forgotten.  I watched 5 seasons on Lost in 4 weeks, finishing season 5 just in time for season 6 to start.  By the time the series ended, I knew everything and could talk about the mythology and conspiracy theories like anyone else.  However, just a few weeks later I had forgotten many details and most of the minutiae.  I feel the same thing coming on with True Blood.  I could not for the life of me remember what had happened in the last season, not to mention the last episode.  On their website, HBO has a good recap of the final season, which definitely helped me get reacquainted in anticipation of Sunday night’s showing.  

I find it interesting that I’m so enamored with this show.  I’m generally not into the vampire genre – I have not read, nor seen, any of the Twilight installments, nor do I care to.  I have zero interest in The Vampire Diaries.  It wasn’t until someone gave me the DVDs and insisted I watch them did I begin to get into them.  I soon found myself watching 3 or 4 episodes in a row, and quickly learned not to watch them close to bed time lest I wanted some of the strangest dreams…

I find it amazing that despite its relatively limited circulation, how much attention HBO’s shows gets from the entertainment news media.  In anticipation of the 4th season of HBO's True Blood, Entertainment Weekly has created a series of covers featuring Sookie (Anna Paquin) and her three potential suitors as the classic iconography of the American Gothic statue. Take a look at them here:

I often wonder when magazines choose to do this whether they give clues to the upcoming season in the imagery.  For instance, Sookie has the same expression in the Eric and Alcide covers, but a different one for Bill.  Could that be telling us something?  Bill and Eric are both wearing jackets, while Alcide is in nothing but overalls.  (BTW, thank you for that, EW.).  Why are Eric and Bill wearing glasses?  All of these beg questions that I cannot even attempt to answer, but if you have any thoughts I'd love to hear them.

Through the network's key art they have divided the cast into three groups with the tag line "Show Your True Colors."  Take a look below:

As far as I can recall, this is the first time where all the key are had groupings of the case.  In the past it's been either individuals or other imagery such as a coffee pot with blood in it or an arm with vampire bite marks on it.  Putting the cast, more than just the three characters who have been the center of the narrative is interesting.  Maybe it hints to a big shift, but I'm really not sure.  What I do know is that it adds to the intrigue for what season 4 has in store for us! 

To further whet people’s appetites for the new season, HBO has released the first 8 minutes of the premiere episode on their site.  I've posted it here so you don’t have to go digging for it.  

Season 4: The 8 Minute Sneak Peek

It seems a little campy to me, and I really and truly hope this show doesn’t jump the shark, which this tease seems awfully close to doing.  Nevertheless, I am looking forward to Sunday night to see what the constantly evolving show has in store for us!

Midnight in Paris

Image from BigShinyRobot.com

Midnight in Paris has all the hallmarks of a Woody Allen film. It’s a love poem to a city, with a neurotic character at its center with a love story guiding the narrative, yet with a few minor adjustments he infuses this film with a new spirit. The film opens on a montage of gorgeous scenes of modern day Paris. Images of its shops juxtaposed with its museums and historical artifacts. This blending of history and modern times will soon become allegorical to the overall storyline.

The protagonist, Gil, played by Owen Wilson, has come to Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAddams) and her family. He is a writer, frustrated that he’s only been successful at writing superficial screen plays for inane Hollywood movies and he yearns to become a respected novelist. His challenge is that he suffers from writer’s block, unable to finish his book about the owner of a nostalgia shop.

Gil is taken with the city’s beauty, yet longs for the Paris of the 1920s (preferably in the rain). As a writer he wishes to exist when the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein inhabited the city and mingled with other great artists. Inez, on the other hand is singularly focused on the future – the close future, mind you. She’s constantly planning that day’s activities for Gil, shuttling him around from fancy lunch to pretentious gallery while her pedantic friend Paul (Michael Sheen) acts as would-be tour guide and jabbers on and on about his expertise in nearly every arena. These two are, like the opening scenery, directly contrasted to one another yet unlike with the city of Paris, the differences don’t suit them as well.

Inez and Gil represent the two sides of the spectrum – one who is stuck in the past and the other is focused on the future. Inez is portrayed as the spoiled brat who always insists on getting her way, clearly the antagonist in this narrative. Our protagonist is more sympathetic, but ultimately succumbs to the same mistakes that Inez does, it just manifests itself differently.

One night Gil has had enough of being told where to go and makes the decision to separate himself from the group. He wanders aimlessly around Paris when an olde-timey car pulls up and the party-goers inside insist he join them to their party. He acquiesces and is whisked away to an era filled with his literary and artistic idols. (Mind you, keeping with the rather whimsical spirit of the film, Allen never explains how this time travel occurs.) At the party he listens to Cole Porter sing his original songs, speaks to Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald about parties and converses with Ernest Hemingway about bravery and what it means to be a man. Later he meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard) who is his 1920s counterpart. They romanticize about bygone eras and wish for a better time. She is the perfect contrast to Inez, who upon growing closer to Adriana begins to realize just how vapid his modern day bride to be is.  Without too much of a real story, this film manages to be sweet and charming.  And it was a fun wink and a nod when each character from the past graces the screen. 

Ultimately the message in this film is about time and idealizations and the people who romanticize the past and previous eras. Gil, nostalgizes about an era in which he never lived. He even chooses to write his would-be masterpiece about someone who does the same. There is something universal about the notion of wishing you lived in a different era. Even if 1920s Paris isn’t your ideal, chances are you’ve considered another decade or age for which you would be better suited. While technically it’s an impossibility to be “nostalgic” for a time in which an individual didn’t live, it’s a common occurrence where people idealize other eras as having been better without actually knowing what that era was like first hand. Hindsight tends to gloss over the negatives of an era as the positive romanticized images are often the ones that live from generation to generation. For example, as a child I wished I was growing up in the 1960s in America. Great music, cool clothes, outdoor concerts, what's not to love? It was only when I got older and learned of the forced draft, mounting violence, and social and political upheaval that also ruled the time. But those negatives aren’t the ones that history puts on display so they’re easier to gloss over and forget.

Time is a funny thing. As one friend of mine once said, “History is propaganda of the victors.” In this instance, “the victors” are the good times which, on an admittedly superficial level, are the ones that remain top of mind. The negatives of our own time seem to the ones that remain top of mind for us. In that context it’s interesting to think that one day, decades from now, there will be people who idealized the late 20th century and early 21st century and wished they could have lived as we live now. The lesson of Midnight in Paris, and what Gil must realize for himself, ultimately is to enjoy your moment, your generation and your time. It’s ok to appreciate eras of the past, but not at the expense of enjoying what you have in front of you.

Jon Stewart Takes on Fox News (again)

Jon Stewart does it again. He is eloquent and articulate in the face of Fox News' Chris Wallace.

Best line: "The embarrassment is that I'm given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does. Not because I have an ideological agenda."

Stewart aptly states his frustration with the bias towards sensationalism that 24-hour news has created and feeds off of. News has not become about reporting on incidents and offering insights. Rather, it has evolved to guiding a narrative that boosts ratings based on the need to offer the viewer something based in conflict. Wallace has chosen not to acknowledge that Stewart takes on both Fox News and, what he sees as their counterpart on the other side of the spectrum, MSNBC. Stewart's on air ideology might seem to be based on anti-conservativism, but long standing viewers of Stewart's show know that he call out anyone who insists on perpetuation of on-air insanity based outside of actual news reporting.

I don't have much more to say...it's kind of long, but I highly recommend watching this. I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

Religulous

Image from uncrate.com

The question of a filmmaker's responsibility to his or her viewer is an oft asked, yet difficultly answered, one.  It is a question that was top of mind for me as I watched Bill Maher's Religulous. In this documentary he claims to be going on a search to understand why people follow religions that are based in so much inconsistency and seeming lies. He posits at the beginning of the film that while the bible claims the end of days will one day be upon us, ultimately it will happen because of man's actions and behaviors.  He also claims through the opening montage of the film that he will be exploring the three major religions.  To a certain extent he a accomplishes this. However he spends about three quarters of the film refuting the words of Christians, while the last quarter is mainly devoted to debunking Muslim doctrine and only 2 short interviews with Jews.  

Maher is known for his comedy and political commentary, and it is clear that documentary filmmaking is not his forte.  The narrative is often disjointed, not having a clear connection from one point or interview to the next.  He jumps around, often not letting the issue to be fleshed out before he moves on or simply mocks the person he's interviewing. 

Maher's biggest weakness as documentarian is with his interview skills. He asks his subject a question and then doesn't even let them fully answer the question before he interjects to simply tell them that they're silly or naive for believing what they do.  Further, the editing is rather weak as he overly relies on the tactic of leaving the camera on the subject as they squirm uncomfortably, seemingly stumped or merely unsure as to how to answer the question.  It also makes it hard to know whether the interviewees are really ignorant on a topic they claim to be experts in or is it simply a function of Maher's editing.     

Moreover, Maher claims that he is setting out on a mission to understand religion. He claims over and over that he simply does not understand. However, as the interviews are conducted he does not seem intent on understanding as much as he just wants to prove the other guy to be an imbecile.  

Maher interviews a wide variety of individuals, and it's a wonder how he even found many of them. Yet, I personally came to question his honesty in subject choices when it came to the two Jewish interviews. Admittedly, this is the religion I am most familiar with and what I was mostly curious about how he would handle. The first Jewish interview was with a rabbi from a small (and much maligned by mainstream Judaism) group called the Neturei Karta. Members from this group are often found protesting any Israel rallies or Zionist endeavors. They believe that the Jews should not have not be in the land of Israel and they often align themselves with the Palestinians to reinforce their message.  Having one member of a fringe subset of ultra-orthodox Judaism stand in for all observant Jews is neither fair nor appropriate in a quest for a supposed understanding of a religion to which he fully admits to not being educated in. 

 The other Jewish interview he conducts is with an engineer who creates items which gets around certain legal prohibitions of the sabbath so certain items can be used. And yes, while some of the loopholes are a bit extreme, he neglects to mention the minutiae of why it is permitted and under what circumstances. For instance the ridiculous looking phone he highlights is not simply to allow observant Jews to call one another to shoot the breeze on the sabbath, but rather in emergencies where the phone might otherwise not be permitted. Seeing the dishonesty in his storytelling in these instances highlighted for me the possibility and probability of him having done the same for the other religions. 

The documentary filmmaker is not a journalist and is not legally or even officially bound to a set of ethical standards. However, they have generally taken it upon themselves to abide by honest rules of storytelling to ensure the trust of their viewers and subjects. It's in this arena Maher should take a lesson. His film making and storytelling would benefit greatly if he did so with an ounce of humility and honesty.  He asserts himself as the voice of reason and. Often does make interesting points that should be asked and discussed by and "believer."  Yet if he were truly interested in understanding his subject matter he would much benefit by allowing he interviewees speak their piece.