The Awesome God Project™®©

Recently, studio releases have focused on the spectacle.  Bigger budgets, bigger names, bigger guns, bigger explosions, bigger screens, and longer run times.  If the movie doesn’t clock in at 2 ½ hours, don’t bother making it.  The recently unveiled Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (with 100% more racism than previous Michael Bay films!) clocked in at 2 ½ hours.  Even the best studio summer movie, Star Trek, ran just over 2 hours (127 minutes) and Terminator Salvation clocked in 5 minutes short at 115.  Studios set up summer movies as an event – you anticipate it, you plan a social outing far in advance, buy tickets early, and arrive at least 30 minutes early if you want a seat.  These movies are supposed to change your life, and you better treat them as such.  The same goes for the Michael Mann movie starring Christian Bale and Johnny Depp, Public Enemies, clocks in at 2 ½ hours.  The based-on-a-true-story depression era gangster film subscribes to the event movie recipe, with a slight tweak of being aimed at adults rather then the coveted teenage demographic.  But, like most event movies, Public Enemies forgot something vital – a story.  You can only clock in at 2 ½ hours if you have a story that can carry you 2 ½ hours.  This concept is something we all learn when you take your first creative writing class, and reiterated in every other creative writing class afterwards, if you only have enough material for 7 pages, you’re only writing 7 pages.  If you stretch those 7 pages into 21 pages, prepare to meet the red pen.

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Apparently, the movie gods are taunting me.  No other explanation for the brazen attitude adopted by the distributors of Steven Soderbergh’s film The Girlfriend Experience.  How else could I miss screenings of the film at two separate theaters just weeks apart?  At this point, my only hope is watching it on Comcast’s OnDemand package.  I will not divulge when I plan to do this on the assumption that Sony reads my blog to deliberately thwart my attempts in reviewing their film.  No other plausible explanation exists.  None.  However, I am a loyal movie patron, and the movie gods threw me a bone.  The theater selected for this week’s venture – the aptly named Novi 8 – had an array of other independent films to choose from (plus Transformers) including Easy Virtue, and the Indian film Kal Kissne Dekha.  The logline for Dekha: An Indian college student has the power to see the future.  Awesome.  How could this go wrong?  Indian films are fun (weird) and time travel always leads to interesting (confusing) stories.  So, my two brothers and I jumped into my car and went off to Novi.  As we’re about to enter the theater, brother Sean suggests we look at the poster for the movie.  Now, kind reader, would you see a film with this type of poster art:

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So, as I expected early on, I’m falling behind in the project.  A myriad of external circumstances, some good (boating) and some not so good (the not so good stuff) has made its move.  Therefore, this week we’re tweaking the project — just this once — to help everything stay on schedule.  Here’s how it will hypothetically play out, only to be foiled by those damn kids and their dog:

1. Let us be realistic: the two big studio releases of the weekend, The Proposal and Year One, are gonna suck.  There is no way around this, it’s one of the few certainties in life.  I may drool at the idea of a Jack Black, Michael Cera, and David Cross flick, but once you stick them in some odd caveman ensemble (and apparently jar together multiple ancient eras) I’m out.  Same with The Proposal, the only Sandra I care about is Day O’Connor and until Ryan Reynolds does the Deadpool movie I will refuse to care about him.  I’d rather rewatch Six-String Samurai then care about any of these two films.
2. I really want to see Soderbergh’s The Girlfriend Experience (I’m a hooker fan, what can I say).
3. Writing reviews are a pain, take a look at my recent one and you’ll see that it looks rushed and way behind schedule.
4. No need for four, but every list needs five points.
5. This is how it’s gonna go down: I made myself a promise. To see a movie a week, different theater, alternating indies and studio releases.  I’m gonna keep to this promise, I will chain myself to the chairs of Rochester’s Star Theatre and watch one of the greatest sins committed to celluloid.  I don’t which one, but let’s hope I’ll be really, really drunk.  However, I’m not writing a review.  At most I’ll throw in a 3 sentence blurb that will read as follows: “Holy F—in’ Sh—t that was horrendous.   Do not go see that.  No matter what your date promises.”  After the so called “movie” I will head over to Novi for The Girlfriend Experience,  not only to regain faith in film and humanity, but also to write a review.  If it sucks, it’s very possible I’m never coming back.  Two bad movies in a week is just to much for me to handle.

And there it is.  My plan to get back on course.  Hopefully see ya in a week.

Anyone who tells stories – well, anyone who tells stories well – realizes several things early on: characters matter, the plot needs a natural ebb and flow, and resolution.  If you lack any of these threes, the story sucks and people don’t care.  But the people who get it – the oral storytellers, the writers, the photographers, even the best salesman – get this.  When you watch these people at work you learn something, not just what car to buy, or the adventures of the intrepid hero, or about how you think – but how to tell a story.  How to build characters, reveal the plot, and create a satisfying resolution.  Rian Johnson, director of the excellent film Brick, takes us into the world of Conmen and woman in The Brothers Bloom with the same premise: performing a successful con is simply telling a good story.  You give the mark what they want, and in return get what you want, their money.  The mastermind behind these plots, Stephen, remarks that point of the perfect con is to give everyone what they want.  And that’s what spurs the movie, the desire for the perfect con.

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During the course of the Project there are a few movies that the method movie going experience will be blindingly obvious.  A few of these times, the methods are highly illegal (I’ll explain more after The Girlfriend Experience), but otherwise it makes for an easy week.  The Hangover is one of the movies where I didn’t need to think.  It was a come-to-Jesus moment in method movie going: I needed to drink during the film.  As such, besides the old standbys of mixing drinks and sneaking in pop bottles and water bottles (or your ever trusty flask), the choice of theaters lent itself quite easily: Emagine Theaters in Novi, the only Michigan theater chain with a bar.  Granted the drinks run around 6-10 bucks depending on the quality of the liquor you want, but it’s easier than sneaking in alcohol to the theater, especially not having a large man-purse – oh, sorry, satchel – to help with the subterfuge.  (For anyone reading outside of Michigan, 10 bucks is a lot for a mixed drink here, even if it is the going rate in Chicago.)  Being a recent college grad, however, I know a thing or two about pre-drinking:

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Learning a magic trick is hard.  I once theorized the magician had a connection to a parallel plane of existence – the Einstein-Rosen bridges – to send and receive object seemingly from thin air.  As always, the truth is a slightly less fanciful – the magician uses long sleeves, sleight of hand, and patter to hide objects from plain view.  Learning these tricks successfully takes a lot of practice and agility.  It is a lot like politics: use long sleeves, sleight of hand, and patter to make people think about the economy instead of national security.  It takes a lot of practice and agility to make this happen in politics, and as an avid campaigner for Barack Obama, I feel an affinity towards magicians. (Anyone staffing up for 2010?  Call me.)  Surprisingly, magicians and politicians get the same amount of respect, but magicians receive it positively (“It’s so cute he’s trying, but you’re becoming a doctor, Suzie.”) and politicians negatively (“At least they’re aren’t Nazis, but you’re becoming an engineer, Suzie.”).  But Is Anybody There? doesn’t care about politics, just magicians, it does show how long sleeves, sleight of hand, and patter can make growing old and dementia appear out of thin air.
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The word salvation is very charged—representing a concept that has been at the center of many church schisms, and I’m not just talking Martin Luther’s fit.  I’m talking about the hundred of small church schisms across the country.  My church has been through 3 or 4 schisms in its existence, and at some point the concept of salvation played a role in all of them.  Should we prepare our congregation for the ongoing and epic spiritual war?  If we don’t use it, do we lose it?  Or, is salvation a one-night stand that turns into an ongoing relationship?  Christians grapple with these questions daily—or whenever someone decides to throw a fit about it.  No matter what interpretation Christians pull out of the Bible, salvation is important.  Without salvation we have no way to Christ, which means no access to Heaven, and no wonderful chat with St. Peter when he’s checking the list at the Gate (“Do you guys have hockey?” “Yeah, and a pretty decent football team, but we need Joe Montana to die so we can get a decent QB.” “What about Jonny U?” “I never was a fan.”).  I tell you this, kind reader, not to teach you about Christianity or God, but because it has nothing to do with Terminator Salvation.  If you evoke salvation in your title, one expects that something happens to lead humanity to safety.  Humanity is saved.  We enter the Promised Land—a land free of killer robots, both terminators and cylons—and go on to build a better life.  If you promise salvation, you better deliver on it, and not leave us at the end trying to convolute a reason for the title.

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This post is gonna be a lot easier if you, kind reader (yes, you, the one person who visits the blog) help me out with a few things.  The cool thing about this internet deal is the supposed interactive nature of the content.  It’s no longer static, but requires a commitment from you, kind reader, for the experience to reach its full potential.  In that spirit, this is what you need to do to enjoy this post (if you don’t, you just won’t get it):

1. Pretend the intro was catchy, a nice thesis of what it to come: AI and robots.
2. Understand the current state of technology, and how science fiction draws on it to give us warnings (Battlestar Galactica), or promises of a great future (Star Trek).
3. Pretend you want to see Terminator Salvation (and I know, this is asking a lot).
4. If you’re reading this thanks to Facebook’s blog import feature, you may have to pretend there are embedded videos.  I’m unsure of how it will turn out after the import.

If you can do these, you will probably enjoy this post.  The end-user experience will become more fulfilling, as you grow more invested in the final product.  You transcend a mere reader, or even user, and become one of the creators.  Your interaction molds the direction of the content and influences how others will see it.  No, seriously.  It’s the same principle as calling food service workers “team members” (or “partners”), or supervisors “shift managers.”  They’ll do more work for free — like you’re gonna do.  If you can’t do these things, you won’t enjoy this post.  Sorry, there is just no way around it.  You can’t keep sucking off the other folks hard work and enjoyment vicariously — if you don’t do the dirty work you’ll have to go somewhere else.

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In a brief, one sentence tagline Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre seems like it would be a natural venture for Michael Bay: a man runs from his gang after killing a high-ranking officer, and crosses path with a young girl and her family as they both make the treacherous journey from Mexico to sneak across the border to Texas.  Now, if this was a Michael Bay film, after an hour of running, running, explosions, car chases, and running would be followed by an hour of gunfights and running, interspliced with a faux-philosophical debate by the Minute Men who intercepted the illegal immigrants.  The surprise twist ending would show one of the civilian vigilantes falling in love with the girl, to the disdain of the ex-gang member.  An epic showdown at the border would be followed by the tear-jerking ending: the girl and the Minute Man would go live on happily ever after (well until she realized – no, no too easy) and everyone else would be deported.  This, of course, would setup Sin Nombre 2: Revenge of El Casper (produced by Michael Bay, directed by Robert Rodriguez).

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Kicking off the project with Star Trek was originally a very binary decision: Wolverine was gonna (and did) suck, while Star Trek looked promising.  Plus, I grew up on Star Trek.  So, should I start the season off on a downer, or with a little punch?  While bad movie reviews are fun, and there will be plenty this summer, I wanted to start with a positive experience.  But—unbeknownst to me—Star Trek perfectly illustrates The Awesome Project’s ™©® maxim, your environment affecting the movie experience.

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