Act of Valor: "Sure it's real, but it's not interesting."

     While watching the navy recruitment movie/action flick Act of Valor, I was reminded of an interview done with Jack Nicholson while he was filming The Shining. He is describing working on scene with director Stanley Kubrick. At some point he wanted to do something in the scene because it was more "realistic". Kubrick simply replied, "Sure it's real, but it's not interesting."

     Act of Valor is less than a real movie. By all accounts it began its life as promotional short to entice young people into joining the navy. While there are real navy SEALS and they do dangerous and exciting things, my guess is the other 99.9999999% of the navy's ranks are doing things that are not quite as sexy or interesting. At some point, the decision was made to expand the promo film into a full length feature for theatrical release. The big pull for the movie is the use of "real active duty SEALs" in the lead roles. Yes, the lead actors in the film are indeed real live navy SEALs.  As actors, they are...real live navy SEALs.

     The plot of the movie is, by all accounts, a variety of real missions shoehorned together to create 110 minutes that reminds me of the pulp novels published by Gold Eagle in the 80's like Mack Bolan, Able Team, and Phoenix Force.  The bad guys are bad and do obviously bad things, the good guys are good and have families and kick ass and take names. 

     On the plus side, writer Kurt Johnstad worked with the SEALs to create action sequences that are quite well staged and shot.  This is where having real live navy SEALs really pays off.  They are in alarmingly good physical shape, and bring a level of skill and agility that no actor or even stuntman could pull off.  And because its basically a recruitment film, the navy happily provided access to armoured patrol boats, helicopters, aircraft carriers, planes, and, in one memorable sequence, a nuclear submarine.  It also means this one of the only films to ever use live ammunition (and lots of it) for the action scenes.  Normally, I'd find this stupid and totally unprofessional.  But the people doing the shooting are active duty navy SEALs, and they are navy SEALs because they hit what they aim at, and nothing else, every time.

     The film is also an example of the benefits and limitations of shooting with DSLR's like the Canon 5D and the GoPro action cameras.  Using small, cheap cameras allows for a lot of coverage and lots of POV shots looking along the barrel of assault rifles.  DP Shane "I was looking at the light" Hurlbut (Best known for incurring the wrath of Christian Bale on Terminator: Salvation), got lots of shots, but the quality varies pretty drastically.  You can get away with dropping in the odd GoPro or 5D shot here and there, but when the bulk of your coverage is shot with them, its going to look wonky.  In all fairness, I don't know if there would have been any other way to get some of the shots, but the digital noise and smearing shutter starts to wear on you.

     Now, I have a great deal of respect for the men in this film.  They are some of the most elite warriors alive today and they do incredibly hard, dangerous stuff all the time where lots of people are trying to kill them.  And frankly, they do an admiral job of handling the "boring, talky" bits of the movie that are required to explain why and who they're going to blow up.  And frankly, with all they've accomplished in their real lives, not being good enough actors to get through the terrible dialogue they have to spew is not worth sweating.

     And that's where things fall apart.  You need actors with the skills of Nick Cage to get through the awful dialogue in this movie.  And these guys are no Nick Cages.  Yes, the action is realistic and it is exciting.  Although the editing could be better.  But everything else has a forced, affected tone to it that just comes off like a bad montage in a Michael Bay movie.

    The other problem is the cast beyond the SEALs.  They are, at best cartoon characters in there conception and performance.  The main bad guy, Shabal, played by Jason Cottle, is introduced to us and he hijacks an ice cream truck, drives it into a private school, and walks slowly away from it as it explodes, killing dozens of small children.  He does the whole "Cool guys don't look at explosions" thing just in case you weren't sure he wasn't really bad.  He spends the rest of the movie being a really bad, really angry, bad guy. 

     The only actor I'd seen before watching this movie was Nestor Serrano, who is quite good for the two scenes he's in before getting shot in the face.  Every dialogue-based scene in this movie is painful to watch.  What makes that confusing is that the SEALs don't say very much.  Sure they have to wade through the macho bonding scenes before the action so you can feel something for them when they are put at risk.  But all the other non-SEAL parts are performed horribly.  I don't know if the filmmakers were worried if the other cast members were good actors that they would make the SEALs look bad, or they actually thought the SEALs were brilliant and set the bar accordingly.

     The other problem with Act of Valor is that it isn't really a movie.  It's a commercial for the navy.  So, unlike a film like David Mamet's Spartan, which is about a special ops guy being sold out by the power structure that uses him, or Black Hawk Down, which while Army supported at least shows the confusion of command and the foolishness of war by committee, Act of Valor never once shows the SEALs or the superior officers put a foot wrong.  This denies the film all kinds of potential conflicts that would make for an interesting story.

     Which comes around to the quip from Kubrick.  Maybe the missions do really happen that way for the SEALs, maybe that's how they talk in briefings.  But if it is, then real ain't interesting.
     

     

 

Things I love from America

The Gibson Les Paul Standard, Twinkies, the Colt M1911A1, the 1967 fastback Mustang, monster trucks, the Drive-In movie theatre, Panavision C-series anamorphic lenses, the Ford big-block V8, the Chevy small-block V8, the Chrysler Hemi, Tur-duck-en, the Bowie knife, Vise-Grips, Shaker furniture, the Springfield M-14, Top-fuel drag racers, Cheese Combos, the Lockheed A-12/SR-71, Coca-Cola, the Smith and Wesson Scofield revolver, the drive-thru window, the B-52 stratofortress, Jiffy-Pop popcorn, the A-10 Warthog, nuclear weapons, Time-Life books, the Sawzall, and Hammond B-3 organ.

Stay classy America

Prometheus: Why should I defend you when you made so many mistakes?

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS.............


Oh dear...

     After much build-up and hype with its awesome trailers and state-of-the-art viral videos, followed by a bitter internet backlash on opening day, I went to see Prometheus with some trepidation.  But, I was determined to give it a fair day in court and to do my best not to be swayed by the hype or the nay-saying. 

     @MrMichaelRose and I went to a good theatre that was largely empty on a Monday night that promised us an "UltraAVX" presentation on a very large screen with 7.1 Dolby Digital sound (On the plus side, the picture in 3D was good due to the Christie projectors throwing enough light to keep the movie from looking too "3D dark".  On the down side, premium sound does not mean "LOUDER THAN FUCK".  I'm glad your system can do playback at that level guys, but running your LFE track that loud distorts the hell out of the low end and will blow your subs sooner rather than later). 

     This was a movie I wanted to like, but was ready to hate if it was as terrible as the internets made it out to be.  In the end, my feelings were pretty mixed.


     "If you're one of those people that gets that upset over Prometheus, you should probably stop watching movies altogether. In a world of Jack & Jill's and What to Expect when you're Expecting, if an ambitious but incredibly flawed sci-fi film is what gets you so upset, there is no hope for you". 

                                                                                                            Jay Bauman of Red Letter Media

     A part of me agreed with Bauman.  If people were willing to pay to sit through shit like Transformers or Battleship, they could certainly do worse than spend 2 hours on Prometheus.  I don't regret seeing it, I didn't feel cheated when I walked out of the theatre, and I still feel people are being too hard on the movie.

     But...

     The two big questions I had after seeing the movie were one; with such an interesting concept and set up from the original Alien, why did Prometheus make choices that seemed to me easily avoidable but repeatedly painted the movie into a corner, and two; Why is Ridley Scott so hit or miss?

     As for my second question, R.S.'s output has always been up and down.  You have classics like Blade Runner and Alien along with quite good films like American Gangster and Thelma & Louise, and then misses like A Good Year and G.I. Jane.  In terms of visual style and production design, he is unrivaled.  His incredible eye for detail and camera placement are just as good now as ever.  Even his worst films look stunning. 

     But like some of my favourite directors (Michael Mann and John Frankenheimer spring to mind), Scott is not a monster for story structure.  He will shoot what he is given as well as it can be shot, but if it isn't there on the page, he sometimes doesn't see it. 

    As for my first question, I really had no major problems with the movie until the third act.  But, I had a series of minor ones throughout the whole movie.  The original Alien is still so powerful to me because it's the Rockford Files of horror/sci-fi movies.  Nobody on the crew wants to be there, but they have no choice.  Eventually their choices ratchet down to nil and they buy it one by one until not even the emergency escape pod is safe.  You never second-guess any of the characters choices because they aren't where they want to be and there is no way for them to escape.

     I can live with the fake crew dynamic scenes like the nonsense bet between the two flight crew guys.  I can live with the stupid biologist trying to make nice with the black ooze King Cobra-penis thing.  I can even live with Shaw being mobile seconds after having major surgery that basically severs her abdominal muscles.   In fact, I'd go along with pretty much the whole movie except for two things.

     First, This nonsense about other ships and Shaw deciding to take David's head with her to get answers from an alien race that will probably kill her the second they see her coming.  And second, the Alien Engineer dying in the escape pod and not in the chair in the alien ship.  Pretty much everything else you can justify or at least gloss over.  But those two plot points are just too much for me. 

     The only reason I can see Shaw going to the Engineer home world is to leave the door open for a sequel.  I don't think that's a good enough reason at all.  It just felt far too handy that there would be other ships just lying around for her to take when she has no provisions and a very damaged android for a navigator. 

     But really, the Engineer dying from the almost full grown Zenomorph bursting from his torso in the escape pod was way too much for me.  Is this canon or isn't it?  And yes, I know that in Prometheus they land on LV-223 and in Alien/Aliens the ship is discovered on LV-426.  But that is such a minor detail and the fact that the Engineer's ship crash lands in basically the same position as the one in Alien/Aliens makes the audience think its the same ship.  Using a slightly different planet ID doesn't excuse a massive continuity error like that.  If it's supposed to be a different place, than the ship didn't need to suffer the same fate. 

    I was disappointed in Prometheus.  I was entertained by the visuals and I did enjoy myself for most of the film.  It's a shame that the last act is such a mess. 

     I think the backlash against the film is really because its such a near-miss.  Such a lot of talent and effort went into making this movie, and about 85% of it is on on the screen.  All it would have taken is some minor changes and a re-think on the last act and it could have been a really good movie.

     I can't bash the movie too hard, but I couldn't give it an unqualified recommendation either.  It's a mess.  A creative mess, but a mess.   

Why men hate the mall now more than ever.

As I type this I am sitting on a bench outside the H&M at Yorkdale mall. Right now, the place is packed with people. Half of those people not only don't want to be here, they are endangering their relationships by being here.

Men hate shopping malls. And why shouldn't we? Over the last ten years most indoor malls have slowly shifted more and more of their floor space to ladies wear. Yorkdale must easily run 85-90% of their square footage to ladies wear, ladies shoes, or ladies accessories.

Now, I understand why this has happened; Big box stores and online shopping have decimated most stand-alone retail stores. Clothing is still something that people need to see in person and try on before they buy it.
It's also a market that will tolerate the profit margins required to run so many retail stores and pay staff.

At the same time, it is boring as shit for most men. Hell, I like shopping. But even I can't stand most malls these days.

Lee Valley

Lee Valley is a specialty hardware/woodworking/gardening store. It is also a place that takes a lot of my money. In a world where the retail industry operates on razor-thin margins, and cheap takes priority over good, Lee Valley is an oasis of quality products not made in China that actually work.

The other thing I love about Lee Valley is the staff. Most of the people who work there are older retired men who I suspect work there for the employee discount. When you go the store, you get a small clipboard with an order form, write down what you want, take a number (literally), and one of the staff goes in the back and collects your order.

Today I stopped by the Lee Valley to pick up an order I had placed online. Thursdays and Fridays they're open from 9 to 9, so I was surprised to see the parking lot empty. Walking up to the front door, I couldn't see anyone inside. But the door opened and at the counter in the back were three older men in Lee Valley polo shirts with a variety of screwdrivers laid out on the counter.

One of the men went back to get my order while the other two continued their discussion on which flathead screw driver was better for tightening and loosening plane blade screws.

What a fantastic job.

Boxing Day is horseshit

For the record, there is no such thing as a "deal" or "sale" on boxing day. The store either has only a few of the sale item you want in stock, or it's a brand they don't normally carry because selling products year-round with a 85% return rate isn't a good business model. The staff hate it, there aren't any real deals, and you spend hours shoulder to shoulder with a pack of fucking imbeciles who would trample each other for a $4 waffle maker. It's a sales gimmick that demeans every one involved.

The Shops at Don Mills

When I was growing up, every Friday evening my Mom and I would go to the Don Mills Centre in Toronto at Lawrence Ave. East and Don Mills Road. Back then it was a single level indoor mall of a medium size. In the 1980's it was a busy place, loaded with long gone stores from before the onslaught of Wal-Mart drove them out of business. House of Knives, W.H. Smith, BiWay, Dominion Toyland, places that were undercut simply because they couldn't order the volume to compete with the Big box stores.

Like many malls of its type, the chain store shuttered one after another until the whole mall was a waste land of cheap knock-off rapper wear and independent Persian rug dealers.

Eventually, the whole thing was torn down. What is in its place now are the Shops at Don Mills, an "upmarket" outdoor mall full of high-end boutiques. One of the anchors for the place when it opened was a large 2-story McNally Robinson bookstore, which closed a year later as part of a bankruptcy restructuring.

Now, Shops at Don Mills runs at about a 30% vacancy rate. People still shop there, but I'm always struck by how few staple stores and services the place has. A 1200 square-foot Calvin Klein underwear store? There are a few good restaurants, most noteworthy being Linda's, which used to be
Located over and run by Salad King at Gould and Yonge. If you went to Ryerson, nothing more needs to be said regarding Salad King's great Thai food at good prices.

Basically, it's a place built for the wealthy of the Post Road to go and spend their disposable income. This is the death of retailing. Now if you want any kind of assistance on a purchase, you better be ready to do it on your own. Online reviews are either written by marketers for the manufacturer or by simpletons who can't spell. The only thing less helpful is the staff in most big box stores.