WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 07/10/06

On Thursday I saw a quirky art film with some friends down in Boston. They’re an academic bunch, so one of them suggested seeing Wordplay, a documentary about both the New York Time crossword puzzle editor, Will Shortz, and the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. It’s not a film I might have seen on my own, but I’m glad they suggested it, as I found it thoroughly enjoyable.

First off, Shotz, and one the paper’s biggest puzzle contributors, were both interesting characters, as were the other puzzle enthusiasts they interviewed. The film also had a very clever sense of humor and some visual-styling touches to reference a boxy crossword grid motif wherever possible, framing people against windows, etc.

They showed a news clip of how on the eve of the 1996 presidential elections, the New York Times had created a puzzle with the center clues working out to allow two possible answers: “CLINTON ELECTED” or “BOBDOLE ELECTED.” The fact that they made all the adjoining words work for both sets of letters, which they showed, was impressive, and you had to admire their cleverness. They interviewed both Clinton and Dole about it, which was also fun.

John Stuart was another celebrity interviewed for his devotion and abilities at solving the puzzles, and as would be expected, he injected a lot of humor into the film. The Indigo Girls were also featured as puzzle heads, which was cool, but they weren’t as entertaining off stage.

The film introduced several of the contestants to the most-recent puzzle tournament, and then spent the last act following the action of the games. It used the same formula as for a sports documentary, following the progress of each contestant along the way. They included graphics of showing the clues and answers as the puzzles were filled in, to get you into the game, and that worked to draw you in.

It was also fun to see the convention atmosphere of the hotel where the tournament is held each year. There were the friends who only saw each other at the tournament, and touching stories about people from past years. I was again reminded that no matter the fandom or interest, fans are pretty similar, from the deliberately-tacky crossword-patterned pantsuit one woman was wearing, to the goofy acts for the talent show.

One guy was doing a themed filk song which I chuckled at. “Our love is a puzzle, with the clues scattered all around, but if you don’t come across, I’m gonna be down…” Heh. So yeah, it was a delightful and sweet little film and I enjoyed it much more than I’d expected.

Originally Written 06/21/06

I was watching movies with friends tonight. James brought out some of his movies and I finally got to see The Forbidden Zone.

My college friend Matt had told me about Richard Elfman’s cinematic opus, starring his brother Danny and his musical troupe, the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo. My curiosity was piqued, and James was all to eager to indulge it. Sara, bless her heart sat through it again too. Wow, words can not begin to describe the film. It was fascinating in its badness and utterly inscrutable.

It was a carnival of the damned, but set to music, complete with whiny transvestites and dirty clowns running around in their t-shirts and underwear and engaging in assorted frottage. Not to mention Hervi Velichez and his zaftig queen and their daughter the shapely and very topless princess.

I can’t say it was good, but it was a hoot to watch. It was a totally-whacked out musical theater set piece, with some really funky animation. Plus Danny Elfman as Satan, singing “Minnie the Moucher” was priceless. It was interesting seeing elements of future Oingo Boingo videos in there, and as I remarked afterwards, “and who would’ve though they went on to make something good later on.”

Originally Written 12/16/05

I went and saw The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe tonight. It was a brilliantly done movie and it totally met my hopes and expectations.

It was very true to the book. I could see places where they had to take some things out for time. There were also some scenes of new material which were added, but that enhanced the story, while staying true to the spirit of the book. One thing I really liked was how they fleshed out the characters of the children more.

That gave them more depth and you could really understand the motivations for their actions, as well as empathizing with them. The actors were all quite good as well. And finally, for those people who are worried about the religions overtones of the movie, don’t let those concerns keep you away.

Like in the book, the Christian subtex is very nuanced and deftly handled, and the story can be taken in both secular or pagan and religious manners. I’ve always loved how C. S. Lewis handled the religious allegories in the Narnia books. Aslan is an obvious Christ figure, but that’s never heavy handed and I liked how warm and caring the character is, even on the occasion when he’s acting as a moral shepherd.

The visuals were amazing. First all the location shots in New Zealand were impressive. There were several breathtaking scenes, and I was reminded of The Lord of the Rings movies in a couple of shots. And of course the creature effects were outstanding. The whole film celebrated Lewis’ love of myths and fantasy and it really brought the world of Narnia and its inhabitants to life. The diversity in characters and creatures was really impressive and the immersive visual fantasy was a lot of fun.

I was a little saddened by the stereotyping of the wolves, as I was when I read the book, but they were still neat to see. Even though the minotaurs were the bad guys, they were also great to look at. The griffins were so cute too, but Mr. and Mrs. Beaver were my favorites. They had good voice actors for them too. And of course Aslan was wonderful too, they got his characterization spot on and Liam Neeson gave his voice a wonderful mix of power and compassion.

One thing that surprised me in the film was the battle scenes. The film opened up with London under attack by a Nazi air raid. I wasn’t expecting that, but it really set the tone for the opening of the film. Then, in the battle between Aslan’s and the White Witch’s armies, I was again surprised by how brutal it was. It wasn’t gorey, there was no blood shown, but it was quite intense. I think it works for a family film, and was definitely not gratuitous. It shows what was at stake and didn’t glorify violence, but at the same time it might be better for older kids.

And the scene with Aslan sacrificing himself to be killed on the stone table was another impressive scene. The stroke of the blade cutting him was never even shown, instead the camera focused on his eyes as the Witch brought down the blow. I felt that to be even more effective. It was very powerful and natural, and not manipulative. There were a couple of scenes in the movies where I felt my eyes watering up, and that was one of them.

Originally Written 06/13/05

I watched a movie with some friends tonight. Lonnie had borrowed an artistic/inspirational movie, What the Bleep Do We Know?! from one of her friends, and we watched that after dinner. Production wise I’d give it good marks, but content wise I found it uneven. Mike, Jeff and I all remarked that it was such a college movie. Mike likened it to a college production, which I kind of thought, thought it had much better production values.

I was even reminded of my sophomoric attempts at philosophy and one of the video art pieces I’d made, The Quest, when during the beginning it had a bunch of people’s voices asking questions like “what is reality.” My video was essentially a dialog with myself and the camer man on such subject, so it was a moment of recognition and deja vu.

Jeff also commented that in college we would’ve stayed up half the night discussing it. I remembered those discussions I had with my friends with some fondness. Of course I also felt a little jaded in that the movie didn’t work nearly as well for me now as it would’ve 10-15 years ago. It started out okay, and the discussion of quantum physics was fun, but they were trying to tie it in with metaphysics, philosophy and eastern/new-age religions.

It felt forced and superficial, like someone who’d read a Pyshc 101 text and Stephen Hawking’s book, and was trying to run with it, without understanding it all. Of course they had various learned scientists and philosophers giving bits of narration and lecture. They sounded like they knew their stuff, but it was also edited to try and tell a bigger picture, which didn’t quite fit for me. I admit I was rolling my eyes a lot during the first part of it. I also felt that the filmmaker was elaborating on certain experiments and phenomena, stretching the truth to the point of mythology in a couple of instances.

However, the second half of the movie redeemed itself for me. They stopped trying to use quantum mechanics and started talking about bio-psychology instead. They touched on brain chemistry, neuro transmitters, associative memory and learned patterns of behavior. I liked how they pointed out that by repeating patterns of emotions, you could change your perceptions of the world, for the better or worse, and you could get locked into “addictions” of emotions and keep repeating behaviors over and over.

I liked how it used a good understanding of brain chemistry, perception, mood and cognition to work into philosophy and basic tenets of self-help and determination. There was a segment of some animations of cells getting turned on with various neuro-transmitters and turning into anthropomorphized representations of various emotions, which was very silly, but also worked well to give a fun mood, while showing the point. That was all mixed in with a montage at a wedding party, where people were running the whole gamut of emotions and responses.

Mixed in with the various people giving instructional narration, was a simple story of a woman, a photographer, who was drifting through life as a passive observer. It showed her following the path of dealing with the scars of past pain to finally make steps towards self improvement. I liked how a lot of that narrative was carried out. The denouement at the end of the film ran on too long, and they reverted back to quantum mechanics to try and tie things together, but it just felt more muddled to me.

While I felt the movie was flawed, I also applaud them for doing such a project on intellectual and spiritual experimentation and thought. It was fun to watch, fun to crack jokes at in a few silly places, but also gave pause for some thought.

Originally Written 04/26/05

When I first joined Audible a few years back, they offered a few free books to download. One of them was the first of the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye andJerry Jenkins. I was curious about it, so I checked it out. That book just plain stunk.

Now to be fair, it was an abridged version of the book, so it had been edited and compressed. However, even giving it the benefit of some doubt, I don’t believe that the editing could account for how bad the writing was. It struck me as a really bad Tom Clancy kind of novel, where the characters would stop and take a break from the action to talk about religion. It had turgid narration, ridiculous plots, unbelievable and cardboard thin characters, and some really lame dialog.

The characters didn’t talk in any fashion like real people did, instead they sounded like they were always giving a lecture or a sermon, not to mention the actual sermons which were sprinkled liberally through the text.

One of the biggest annoyances in the book for me is that the Rapture occurs and a good portion of the population just vanishes. That causes some buzz, but then after the first chapter and a couple of brief background news stories, nobody mentions it again. It’s such a profound event, but it’s tossed aside. The author made his point and since the characters didn’t have any real internal lives, the rest of the world just ignores it.

Now granted I wasn’t the book’s target audience, but that’s still not an excuse for bad writing. If you ignore the leaning of the book, and look at the story itself, it’s barely even second rate. And that’s what annoyed me. I’m all for authors having a theme and putting some of their thoughts and views in a book, but above all else, have a good story. When a book becomes a sad vehicle for your agenda, then it’s an insult to the reader’s intelligence.