The Scream franchise disappears even further up its own backside as the action moves to a Hollywood studio making a movie dramatizing a book relating the events seen in the original movie. We’re invited to take the moral point of view that the book-within-the-movie and the movie-of-the-book-within-the-movie are exploiting tragedy, but it’s not clear if Scream 3 is self-aware enough to apply those lessons to itself.
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Scream 2 is a self-fulfilling prophecy
There’s nowhere else the Scream franchise could have gone other than here: an ironic, self-aware sequel to an ironic, self-aware horror film.
When one the characters states “Sequels suck! Oh please, please! By definition alone, sequels are inferior films!”, it’s something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. There’s a fine line between winking at your audience and just throwing up your hands and admitting your new movie can’t measure up to the original.
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Once revolutionary, Scream now feels quaint
It’s easy to forget how revolutionary Wes Craven’s Scream seemed in 1996, and how influential it’s been since. Rewatching it 17 years later, I’m struck by how… well, quaint it seems in retrospect. Now every post-Scream horror movie is required to be a postmodern deconstruction of the genre.
Maybe the trend reached its apotheosis with The Cabin in the Woods. But who knows, maybe in 17 more years another post-postmodern de-deconstruction will obsolete it as well.
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Every line must rhyme in Les Misérables
Les Misérables left me cold
Nothing shown and everything toldAll that hollering and shrieking
Leaves my head achingEvery line must rhyme
Across its excessive running timeNo subtlety of emotion
The screen filled with commotionEddie Redmayne sings a song atop a pile of doors
My god what a boreHugh Jackman sheathes his claws
To grimace and overemote without pauseRussell Crowe huffs and puffs
Cashing his check to afford more foodstuffsIt’s Anne Hathaway’s big Oscar chance
Which she almost ruined by forgetting her underpantsEvery theater nerd knows all the words
Everyone else calls it a turd -
This is 40 was made by comedians, for comedians
Because you demanded it: a sequel to Knocked Up! Oh wait, you didn’t? Neither did I.
Even as an admitted “dramedy”, Judd Apatow’s This is 40 is a major bummer. Laugh and cry as you watch a couple deal with the same problems ordinary people can relate to: what to do with their rewarding jobs, giant house, and Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann’s uncommonly good looks.
This is 40 falls squarely into a certain subgenre of movie comedy made by comedians for comedians, forgetting that ordinary civilians might be in the audience. You could call it the “Yes, and…” genre, after the standup tenet of never cockblocking to your improv partner’s volley with a “No, actually…”
You know how many comedies append outtakes to the end credits (or DVD bonus features), as a kind of easter egg? One key giveaway of the “Yes, and…” comedy is that these discourses are actually left in the movie. This is 40 then serves up even more after the end, in the form of one extended improvisation in which Melissa McCarthy cracks up everyone else on the set, while remaining strictly in character.
Those of us who don’t take evening improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade will find this scene something of an indulgence, especially after 134 minutes of loosely strung-together improv bits in the supposedly narrative portion of the film.
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Imagine There’s No Religion: Doctor Who and The Rings of Akhaten
Is the Doctor Who episode “The Rings of Akhaten” already one of the series’ most misunderstood? Almost two years ago, the Doctor urged his companions Amy & Rory not to live up to the title of “Let’s Kill Hitler”, for the vaguely-explained sci-fi reasons that changing history doesn’t always work out for the best. The Doctor defeated the devil before, in “The Impossible Planet” and “The Satan Pit” from Series 2. Here he has no compunctions in also killing god.
I’ve now listened to three fan podcasts debating the merits of “The Rings of Akhaten”, and was frankly surprised to discover the episode has been met by Doctor Who fandom with ambivalence at best, and outright derision from the rest. I would certainly not try to defend it as an instant classic, but it certainly does not deserve to be counted among the abysmal failures like “Fear Her” and “Last of the Time Lords”. In fact, I would argue it’s worthy of praise for daring to say something potentially very controversial. Perhaps it doesn’t say it very well (as evidenced by the fact that none of the participants in those three podcasts so much as broach the topic), but at least it’s a story that strives to be more than the usual Doctor-defeats-an-alien-invasion routine (not that there’s anything wrong with that routine — as a lifelong fan I love that routine!).
Out of all the various opinions voiced by the hosts of Radio Free Skaro, Verity, and Two Minute Time Lord, I align most with Chip of the latter, who was pleased the show still has the potential to be surprising. But everyone, even Chip, failed to even address what I took to be the major takeaway from the episode: the Doctor essentially rescued a civilization from a parasite they worshipped as a god. He freed a society from their self-defeating religion, and they thanked him for it.
Writer Neil Cross is famous for the grim BBC series Luther, and his script for Doctor Who was generally much lighter. But “The Rings of Akhaten” was about something very important, in a way that the series does not often attempt. I would classify it broadly in the same league as “Vincent and the Doctor”, where science fiction tropes were employed for a thinly-veiled metaphor of a particular aspect of human existence. Just as “Vincent and the Doctor” used time travel and invisible monsters to explore the topic of depression and suicide, “The Rings of Akhaten” used asteroids, interstellar mopeds, and angry space mummies to make a point about the detrimental effects of religion.
After watching the episode, I fully expected the fan conversation to be about how the show overstepped by taking on the negative affects of faith and religion. I expected many to take offense for daring to go there. But instead, it got called “dumb” and “stupid”, and Radio Free Skaro even dubbed it “The Borings of Akhenaten”. I suppose it raises the questions of what people want or expect from Doctor Who, which would seem to be plot, story, and character development. Anything beyond that (such as allegorical explorations of deeper themes like faith and religion) might as well be invisible. A good piece of science fiction ought to excel in both areas, so it seems “The Borings of Akhenaten” falls down on both fronts: none of the podcast hosts thought to mention the topic of religion (imagine talking about “Vincent and the Doctor” without mentioning depression!), and on the practical side, the plot particulars might not hold up to much scrutiny. But since when has Doctor Who ever been about hard sci-fi and airtight plotting? Any fan that demands that stuff probably ought to be watching Star Trek.
I don’t think I’m reaching at all in my interpretation here. This has to be one of the most thinly-veiled metaphors in Doctor Who history. The Doctor (Matt Smith) and Clara (Jenna-Louise Coleman) begin their adventure explicitly discussing the society’s religion. He briefly explains how their belief system works: a giant orb in the sky, known as Grandfather, is worshipped as a vengeful god. A priesthood has long placated it via song, until today.
The parasitic “god” known as Grandfather, memorably described by the hosts of the Verity podcast as Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin Clara wondrously asks, “Is it true?” For of course, she just rode across space and time to her first alien world, so it would’t be much more of a stretch to ask if, yes, the giant ball of gas in the sky (which the hosts of Verity memorably compared to Charlie Brown’s Great Pumpkin) might actually be a god that demands offerings of precious memories. The Doctor pauses, smiles, and then replies “It’s a nice story”. Again, it’s not subtle: the Doctor is saying that what these people believe is a god is actually just a thing. Many, many times before he’s unmasked the supernatural: the mummies in “Pyramids of Mars” were robots, the ghosts in “The Unquiet Dead” and the devil in “The Satan Pit” were aliens, etc. There is no real supernatural in the Doctor Who universe.
I’ve put all of this very broadly to try and keep this post short, but my point is that the episode was far from “dumb”, “stupid” or “boring”. For better or for worse, it took on some complicated questions about religion. It also made me wonder about what it is the Doctor does to the civilizations he rescues. He has a long history of freeing groups from oppression, often leaving at the end of the story having totally and utterly upended the status quo. Here, the Doctor frees a people from their self-destructive religion. It’s not a perfect metaphor for atheism, for in a sense this god is real — not actually a god, but real. Atheists would point to the tyranny of organized religion, which is the work of fellow humans.
John Lennon (and uncredited cowriter Yoko Ono) asked in “Imagine” that we consider a world without countries or possessions, and heaven or religion. The alien civilization in “The Rings of Akhaten” has an economy that derives directly from their religion: just as their ersatz god feeds upon emotional memories, they pay for goods and services with objects imbued with sentimental value. The Doctor destroys both of these things: not only their god but also the very meaning behind their currency.
This alien culture, as far as we see it in this episode, is defined by only two things: its religion and its commerce. All we see of them is a marketplace and a religious order. So, in rescuing them, the Doctor takes away everything that we know about them. And they’re happy for it. Surely that’s the interesting thing about this episode, right?
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Songs That Broke My Heart: Days in the Trees (Reich) by No-Man
Any playlist of sad songs I might compile must include No-Man, but it was no easy task to select only one piece from a songbook positively chock full of them. To make my job a bit easier, I went back to the band’s beginnings.
Similar in style to their first breakout single “Colours” (a dramatic reimagining of Donovan’s mid-60s folk-pop hit), “Days in the Trees” is very much an artifact of early 90s minimalist art-pop. Despite its superficially dated production, the song is quintessential No-Man: Tim Bowness’ melancholy vocals hovering over Steven Wilson’s looped breakbeat, accompanied by Ben Coleman’s dramatic violin and very little else.
I found myself drawn to a relatively obscure alternate version subtitled “Reich”, first released in 1992 on the virtually impossible to find original EP and the subsequent mini-album Lovesighs – An Entertainment, and now available on the retrospective anthology All the Blue Changes. In a personal reassessment, Bowness expresses reservations about the mix and performances in the released version, but concedes that “Reich is a piece I still love”.
Utterly unlike a prototypically unimaginative remix in which rigid disco beats are bolted onto scraps of a song, this version has only the most tenuous of connections to its source material. It omits Bowness’ vocals entirely, in favor of a gently repeating keyboard arpeggio. The title alludes to composer Steve Reich’s brand of systems music, which reached its hypnotic apotheosis in Music for 18 Musicians. A generation of electronic musicians expanded upon Reich’s interlocking patterns, and Reich himself later completed the circle by experimenting with electronica and remixing on his 1999 album Reich Remixed.
The stark ambient soundscape of “Days in the Trees (Reich)” provides an atmosphere for an astonishing soliloquy extracted from David Lynch’s seminal TV series Twin Peaks. Donna (Laura Flynn Boyle) is a teenager disillusioned by unsavory revelations regarding her best friend Laura’s drug abuse and sexual misadventures. Over the course of the series, she is exposed to even greater depths of corruption and depravity in her seemingly idyllic small American town.
“It was the first time I ever fell in love.” While pursuing information on her own, Donna finds it necessary to ingratiate herself to a lonely male stranger. The mode of seduction she chooses is to recount the story of her first kiss. Her ploy quickly becomes a real confession, even an uncomfortably intimate flirtation. It’s an ostensibly happy memory, but her state of bliss over an event in the distant past is shot through with melancholy over a sublime moment long gone. Forced to confront the profound darkness festering in her community, this young woman prematurely mourns simpler times forever out of reach. Her tale portrays herself as a girl just beginning to sense that sexuality was a dangerous force her friend had already embraced but she couldn’t yet harness.
Boyle may not be one of the world’s most celebrated actors, but her performance in this scene is nothing less than stunning. Bowness and Wilson edited and condensed her monologue, but opted to leave in the sound effects of a cigarette lighter and her exhalation, effectively providing an audio vérité percussion track. Here is a full transcript of the truncated version that appears in “Days in the Trees (Reich)”:
“This is from a long time ago, is that ok? I was about thirteen years old, fourteen maybe. We were going to the Roadhouse to meet boys. They’re about twenty years old. And they’re nice to us. And they make us feel like we’re older. Rick asks if we wanna go party and Laura says ‘yes’, and all of a sudden I feel this knot building up in my stomach. But when Laura gets in the truck with Rick, I go anyway. A stream in the woods, and when I think, it’s pale and light out. Laura starts to dance around the boys. She begins to move her hips back and forth. And we take off our clothes. I know the boys are watching. Laura starts to kiss Josh and Rick. I don’t know what to do, so I swim away. I feel like I want to run, but I don’t. He kisses my hand and then me. I can still feel that kiss. His lips are warm and sweet. My heart jumps. He’s talking but I can’t hear him. It was the first time I ever fell in love.”
Donna, Twin PeaksThe brief song drifts away on her last word.
Further reading:
- Lovesighs, Loveblows And Lovecries – A Reassessment, Tim Bowness’ own musings upon this era of No-Man.
- An appreciation of the single by The Blue in the Air.
- The official No-Man site: no-man.co.uk
You’re reading an entry in our ongoing mixtape The Songs That Broke My Heart. Get started with the introduction or dive right in. Know a sad song you’d like to see added to the playlist? Please let me know in the comments below.
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The Songs That Broke My Heart
Rock ‘n’ roll is not an everyday conversation topic around our family table, but the improbable longevity of The Rolling Stones was remarkable enough to come up once during dinner. I had recently listened to “Sympathy for the Devil” for the first time in a while, and remarked upon how surprisingly dark and intense it was, so much so that it gave me chills. My grandmother asked why, then, would I deliberately listen to something that unsettled me?
She had a point. Upon reflection, I’ve found that most of the music I hold dear is chilling (like the aforementioned ode to Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita), chilly (like some of the more academic, brainy music by Brian Eno or Philip Reich), or just plain cold (pretty much everything else). Some have subject matter that makes you want to jump out a window, some just sound like they do, and some may not be sad per se, but are rather so painfully beautiful I almost can’t bear listening to them.
How on earth did incurable sad sacks like The Cure, Nick Drake, or Kurt Cobain become pop stars? Why do we listen to the likes of “Hallelujah”, “Mad World”, or “Hurt” for fun? The answer is simple, but opens a can of worms: prehistoric humans almost didn’t invent music for entertainment or personal expression, but rather as a component to ritual, spirituality, and community.
To think of music as merely entertaining or escapist is to belittle an entire art form with limitless capabilities. Even at its best, it can be dissonant and ugly (such as György Ligeti’s Requiem, which still sounds alien today in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey) just as easily as it can be pretty and moving (Johan Pachelbel’s Canon in D, so lovely it has passed into cliche and back again). It’s possible to make the same point about other oft belittled media, such as comics — where the uninitiated may be unable or unwilling to accept that the same format that stars Ziggy and Superman can also be as trenchant as Gary Trudeau’s Doonesbury or as literary as Art Spiegelman’s Maus.
Hence this new series of short essays exclusively: The Songs That Broke My Heart, in effect a playlist of melancholy, misery, and loneliness. It is not meant to be an objective list of the saddest songs of all time, but rather a personal compilation of songs that create an emotional response in me now, at this time in my life. But first, I’m going to start with something slightly more esoteric. Watch this space for my thoughts on No-Man’s “Days in the Trees (Reich)”.
The Songs That Broke My Heart:
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Batman: Year One copies the comics but doesn’t capture what made the them classics
The film buffs at Criterion Cast recently took a break from their usual discussion of the likes of Ozu, Godard, and Cox for in their year-end podcast review of the 2012 year in movies. Rather surprisingly to me, they talked up Batman: Year One and Dredd as two underrated 2012 releases. I had been happily ignoring both, but checked them out on Netflix and was soundly disappointed by both.
I used to be a big comics fan, but haven’t followed them in years. It seems both Marvel and DC Comics have since started animation factories cranking out adaptations of some of their more famous stories.
I’m sorry to say that Batman: Year One is inferior in every way to the original comics from the 1980s (which I believe I still have copies of somewhere). It takes a number of liberties from the source material, about which I’m ambivalent. Movies are movies, and comics are comics, and any adaptation from one to the other ought to make as many changes as the artists/writers/filmmakers/whatever wish. But a necessary question that immediately follows is: what was it about the source material that made it worthwhile in the first place, and how can it be preserved? Or at least translated or transformed to be equally exciting in another medium?
The Batman: Year One movie failed to capture much about the comics that has made them classics. At one point in the movie, a character tosses a photograph onto a table, rendered in David Mazzucchelli’s art style from the original comics. Intended as an homage, it merely emphasizes the unimaginative and bland animation style.
Without the timelessly stylized artwork, all you have left is Frank Miller’s hardboiled writing and plotting, which looks a little thin in the cold light of day.
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Planes, Trains and Automobiles is astonishingly unfunny
I’ve been catching up on my John Landis, for better or for worse. Trading Places and Coming to America are both much better than I remembered, and I’m glad I revisited them. But Planes, Trains and Automobiles is just astonishingly unfunny. A slapdash production, clearly banking solely on the presumed charm and appeal of its stars without a solid screenplay or sense of character to back them up.
Steve Martin’s character is fuzzily defined, wavering between misanthropic big city businessman and “gee, I guess I’ll give friendship and bonhomie a shot”. While John Candy is inherently likeable, the movie makes the imitative fallacy with regards to his character: he’s gross, blunt, and crude, designed to be everything a big city guy like Martin ignores as he goes about his day. But the problem is… he actually is annoying to the audience too, making it difficult to come around to find either of these two likable or endearing. That’s fine for a complex drama, but it’s fatal for a heartwarming comedy.