films

space cadet II

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CC_770_A

"Ryder, Ryder, you're needed back at dump HQ, over."

This painting and Space Cadet were loosely inspired by Mario Bava's Planet of the Vampires, one of the most exquisitely art-directed films ever made. Perfectly framed shots combine high opera poses with the clarity of Steranko panels. The camera makes effortless, angular glides past elegant instrument banks and down the vaults and corridors of Bava's soundstage spaceship. The leather S&M catsuits with extravagant wing collars and asymmetrical zippers worn by the male model spacemen and zaftig spacewomen occupy a dimension beyond pulp. As ludicrous as the dialogue gets you can't take your eyes off those costumes.

Ms. Thing

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A: Stopped reading Andrew O'Hehir's Salon review of the The Thing prequel at the words "tough female protagonist."
B: Why, are you a sexist?
A: Per a theory floated in Anne Billson's thoughtful BFI paperback on John Carpenter's Thing, the tough female protagonist is...the Thing. All the rest of the cast, every hairy one of them, is male, and the movie is about 12 men being ripped open, torn in half, chomped and suffocated by a shape-shifting Will to Chaos that would make Luce Irigaray proud--a "true femme fatale," in Billson's phrase. The mutual suspicion and macho Lack of Community among this crew is ultimately as devastating as the monster. Billson notes that after 1982 no Hollywood movie would be cast entirely with men, and The Thing's political incorrectness is ultimately a strength. (Reservoir Dogs is a later exception but it is an "indie" and its director famously admires Carpenter's Thing.)
B: Huh, well, not everyone likes Irigaray.
A: And besides, the movie about the tough female protagonist going up against the Iragarayan Will to Chaos has already been made, once by Ridley Scott and once by the hack James Cameron. We don't need to see those again.
B: Huh.

Netflix WI: The Canon

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Reading through some of the other essays in the Pool journal now.
Glad to see someone else questioning whether Netflix recommendation algorithms are the bee's knees. Eugene Kotlyarenko writes:

In the Netflix viewing model, one supposedly knows exactly which available films are related to the films they’ve already seen and enjoyed. This results in a conservative viewing environment where one tends to stick close to the sources of pleasure. And in fact, in a certain way this strategy immediately sets up viewers for dissatisfaction. Direct comparison to high-rated personal favorites psychologically primes viewers for a higher expectation set, than they would have if they were approaching a film with general knowledge but not direct comparison. This practice invariably results in higher rates of disappointment from the viewer, since it is nearly impossible for successive movies to consistently top previous favorites. Quizzically, the algorithm also functions to create comical hybrid genres that purportedly describe a viewer’s taste. The idea of having one’s viewing habits boiled down to “Tortured-Genius Dramas based on real life,” “Critically-Acclaimed Family Friendly Animation,” and “Cerebral Gay & Lesbian Dramas” can certainly make one question not only the entire prospect of being a serious film viewer, but may lead to some existential soul-searching.

Kotlyarenko's consideration of what Netflix streaming will do to the film canon is well worth a read. He's a bit hard on TV--the films absorbed by the Cahiers du Cinema crowd back in the day were mostly Hollywood schlock, no less saddled by convention and economic expectation, where the risks and artistry took place in spite of the system. This is also true for the TV we value: Monty Python, Outer Limits, Star Trek TOS and TNG, Lost Seasons 1-2, Trailer Park Boys, etc.

Kotlyarenko argues that canons depend on what's available for viewing (repertory cinema, VHS, DVD) and predicts that Netflix will be that next available thing. Let's take him one ghastly step further and imagine that because the studio, eh, fascists will only license the best films for short periods of time, the canon that will emerge will be films that never leave the catalog. Future scholars and young filmmakers will thus have their inspiration and values shaped by Hellraiser VI: Hellseeker, Blue Crush, Breakin' 2, and the complete works of Steven Seagal.

The Stubborn Dream of Everyday Virtuality

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...is an essay I wrote for the Pool journal [Internet Archive], for its July issue. Please give it a look. Opening paragraphs:

In an interview in the early 2000s, Steven Lisberger, director of the first Tron movie (1982), talked about his goals for the film. Artists, he believed, could bring inspiring life to new technologies that might still be dry, baffling, and insular to the general public. With Tron, he sought to bestow a new kind of mythological identity on the circuit boards and spreadsheets of the emerging computer industry, and largely succeeded: the film introduced visions of cyberspace that have endured. Its data-mazes and menacing walls of security encryption laid the foundations for the 3D networks of global interconnection described in William Gibson’s book Neuromancer, published two years later, and its fully -fleshed out avatars (with or without motherboard spandex) have become a virtual reality staple.

Lisberger complained in the same interview that the Web had not fulfilled its promise, lamenting that it had, by the turn of the Millennium, become a dispiriting place of porn and gossip. Few could argue with that, but what might have disappointed him more was that the Web didn’t look like Tron. Humanlike avatars zoomed through pure geometry and clinked glasses in virtual cafes in films such as The Matrix, while actual people, sitting at actual computers, engaged in a form of mass, high speed letter writing. Ten years later, we’re still typing away while our uploaded selves frolic only in cable TV science fiction shows.

The image accompanying the essay (slightly enhanced) comes from Duncan Alexander's tour of Alpha World [dead link].

Thanks to ARTINFO for the shout about the essay.

Update, January 2021: The "Pool" journal, inactive for many years, finally seems to have given up the ghost. The Internet Archive saved a copy of my essay.

amusing netflix error

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chooseme

Screenshot--I did not fabricate this.
The Alan Rudolph film is pretty good, though I haven't seen it in ages. Ed Ruscha has a minor role as a radio DJ who makes locker room remarks about on-air sex therapist Genevieve Bujold from the safety of his soundproof control room. Keith Carradine plays her mysterious love interest. The Tolkien parts were good, too.

Also, "romantic comedy" doesn't quite nail it for Rudolph: he prefers the term "emotional science fiction." Maybe someone thought that meant hobbits.