I've found a new thing to aspire to in my work. Or maybe it's an old thing. Or maybe it's what I've always wanted.
So much art happens because that sort of art is happening now. That isn't to say that it's necessarily bad--the last decade's wave of superhero movies produced a few with actual artistic merit; some of the young adult fantasy literature flooding the market right now is actually worth reading; there are even some Dutch oil paintings of historically insignificant aristocrats that are enriching to look at, in their own way--and I'm certainly not saying that I hope never to cash in on a convenient industry trend.
What I mean to say is that a lot of art that is produced seems inevitable. Ideas floating around the culture collide randomly like molecules and react in ways that are random and original, but predictable. (This happens in more practical spheres like science and politics as well.) When zombies became a "thing" they spread, zombie-like, across the culture and combined with everything. It produced some interesting combinations such as zombie romantic comedies, zombie adaptations of classic literature, and zombie Shakespeare kung fu musical theater*, but that says more about the zombie image's penetration than anything else. The question isn't whether or not something will happen, but who will do it.
On Friday night I took the time out to go see The World's End with Girlfriend, and when the credits rolled I said to her that it was nice to see a movie that, if these specific people hadn't decided to do exactly what they did, would not have happened. I don't think the stars were aligned to produce a movie about a bittersweet, nostalgic midlife pub crawl in a town that's been taken over by robots. Edgar Wright and company made that happen.
That's what I'd like to do. Maybe not exclusively, but I would like to add at least one thing to the culture that wasn't just going to happen anyway. I don't think I'm just talking about "creativity" either. Or "originality" for that matter. There is plenty of both at work in the main stream of culture. And tasting the zeitgeist and knowing what art will speak perfectly to the moment is another ability I would like to have. But it's a special thing to find a combination of ideas that works that lies outside of the main currents. Something like that may not be imitated--and perhaps shouldn't--and may only be remembered as an intriguing footnote at most.
If God had delegated the creation of life, and I had been involved, I would be proud to have created the platypus, perhaps as much as the redwood or the tyrannosaurus.
* My thesis aside, I admit that if Qui Nguyen didn't write Living Dead in Denmark it probably wouldn't have happened.
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Showing posts with label art. Show all posts
Saturday, September 7, 2013
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The Miz
I watched the Les Misérables movie on Thursday night, which turned out to be a good use of my time. Girlfriend is taking one of her classes to see it tomorrow, too, which I think might actually be a good use of their time. This surprises me, but it is so.
As another big novel adaptation of the winter movie season (albeit with a major intermediate step), Les Mis bears comparison to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Observation number one: Victor Hugo's approximately-one-million-word novel was reasonably adapted into a reasonably long movie. J.R.R. Tolkien's much shorter novel cannot, apparently, on the other hand, fit in three unreasonably long movies. You would think it had been Tolkien who couldn't shut up about nuns.
A lot of love for the book and the musical evidently went into this movie. It's a useful lesson in how you can lovingly adapt a work without necessarily rubbing every word of your source material into a tremendous lather. The battle between Fred and Satan (which I mentioned regarding TH:UJ) played out quite differently in these two movies. I actually found Satan's influence quite small in Les Miz.
Les puts a lot on the actors' acting ability. Do you remember that scene in Rocky, during the training montage, when Rocky is running past a docked freighter? The camera starts close on Sylvester Stallone and then pans out slowly in a long shot, until it registers with the audience that Stallone must actually be in really good shape. Well, about two hours' worth of Lez consist of that moment, with varying results. The songs are shot in merciless, continuous closeup.
Just how close, and how continuous, seemed to be a function of the character's billing. The bigger the part and the actor, the more the movie relied on their face and voice to tell the story, to the exclusion of all other dramatic expedients. Consequently, I spent a lot of time trying to see around Hugh Jackman's head. Much of Anne Hathaway's torso is allowed to appear in "I Dreamed a Dream." The supporting cast end up in the movie's sweet spot, since it's assumed that they could benefit from some actual mis-en-scene. In almost every case, the relentless camera work reflects well on the actors.
It's been popular among reviewers to find fault with Russell Crowe's performance. He does seem to be the only one who needs to spare concentration from his acting for singing--except when Hugh Jackman falters while running the falsetto gauntlet that is "Bring Him Home." Sweeney Todd did a pretty good job of establishing that it doesn't take a strong singing voice to drive a movie musical. It turns out, though, that while you don't need to be able to project to the cheap seats, you do need to be able to sing and act simultaneously. And Crowe's Javert would have been suitably intense in a Mis cast like Todd; he could have gone rasp for rasp with Johnny Depp. In his present company, though, he comes off as introspective at best, and weak at worst.
Nothing in this movie is totally bad, though. Its flaws are almost entirely the result of too much faith placed in the abilities of extremely talented actors, and that sort of thing can only go so wrong.
As another big novel adaptation of the winter movie season (albeit with a major intermediate step), Les Mis bears comparison to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Observation number one: Victor Hugo's approximately-one-million-word novel was reasonably adapted into a reasonably long movie. J.R.R. Tolkien's much shorter novel cannot, apparently, on the other hand, fit in three unreasonably long movies. You would think it had been Tolkien who couldn't shut up about nuns.
A lot of love for the book and the musical evidently went into this movie. It's a useful lesson in how you can lovingly adapt a work without necessarily rubbing every word of your source material into a tremendous lather. The battle between Fred and Satan (which I mentioned regarding TH:UJ) played out quite differently in these two movies. I actually found Satan's influence quite small in Les Miz.
Les puts a lot on the actors' acting ability. Do you remember that scene in Rocky, during the training montage, when Rocky is running past a docked freighter? The camera starts close on Sylvester Stallone and then pans out slowly in a long shot, until it registers with the audience that Stallone must actually be in really good shape. Well, about two hours' worth of Lez consist of that moment, with varying results. The songs are shot in merciless, continuous closeup.
Just how close, and how continuous, seemed to be a function of the character's billing. The bigger the part and the actor, the more the movie relied on their face and voice to tell the story, to the exclusion of all other dramatic expedients. Consequently, I spent a lot of time trying to see around Hugh Jackman's head. Much of Anne Hathaway's torso is allowed to appear in "I Dreamed a Dream." The supporting cast end up in the movie's sweet spot, since it's assumed that they could benefit from some actual mis-en-scene. In almost every case, the relentless camera work reflects well on the actors.
It's been popular among reviewers to find fault with Russell Crowe's performance. He does seem to be the only one who needs to spare concentration from his acting for singing--except when Hugh Jackman falters while running the falsetto gauntlet that is "Bring Him Home." Sweeney Todd did a pretty good job of establishing that it doesn't take a strong singing voice to drive a movie musical. It turns out, though, that while you don't need to be able to project to the cheap seats, you do need to be able to sing and act simultaneously. And Crowe's Javert would have been suitably intense in a Mis cast like Todd; he could have gone rasp for rasp with Johnny Depp. In his present company, though, he comes off as introspective at best, and weak at worst.
Nothing in this movie is totally bad, though. Its flaws are almost entirely the result of too much faith placed in the abilities of extremely talented actors, and that sort of thing can only go so wrong.
Sunday, June 24, 2012
I art when I video game all the time
A friend from college lured Girlfriend and me into Washington D.C. proper, where we ducked into the Smithsonian American Art Museum to look at the Art of Video Games exhibit. Why, yes, we are nerds.
Without being too harsh, it was not what we had hoped for. It partly came down to a grammatical quirk. I had wanted to see art from video games, perhaps concept art, stills, and things of that nature. What I got was more an exhibit explaining how video games could be art themselves. So, you see, it was something like picking up The Art of War expecting it to contain reproductions of the Bayeux Tapestry and Guernica. Something like, but not exactly.
The problem really was that we were well ahead of the exhibit. We needed no convincing that video games were legitimately art, in the same sense that movies are. The question of whether video games deserve to be in a museum is like the question of whether a cheetah deserves to be in a zoo. It's not a matter of classification or merit. Onla a small subset of art is best experienced in a museum.
You'll hear no complaints from me if you assert that video games have narrative, evocative, salutary potential. The booklet accompanying the exhibit, according to Girlfriend (who read it), was a bit breathless about this, praising the medium's achievements with a convert's zeal.
Anyway, we weren't the intended audience, really. In this (and perhaps only this) we were more sophisticated than the mainstream museum crowd. I would have liked to see a room full of stills from Myst, instead of a large cabinet where it could be played, accompanied by a paragraph on how immersive it was.
It was a nice, nostalgic afternoon, though, of the sort I am likely to miss this year when other people go to PAX. And this is not to say that I didn't see or learn anything new. I had not known, for example, that Doom 2 was the first game to employ a "game engine." Girlfriend also pointed out the unusual number of major installments in video game history that are #2 in a series.
Speaking of the narrative potential of video games, though, I've been sucked back into Dwarf Fortress with the last few batches of updates, and more of a story has come of it than I had expected. Though it's not completed, I will share it with you.
My fortress had a vampire. Some dwarves were waking up mysteriously pale, and one was found dead in his room, completely drained of blood. So the search was on.
It was the mayor. I found out by accident that he had come to the fortress under a pseudonym. Examining his history revealed a suspiciously long list of previous residences. Most damning, he couldn't remember the last time he had drunk alcohol, which in a fortress that was practically afloat in booze, was almost proof positive that he had developed an unnatural thirst.
This was dismaying. Here was a mayor who had made himself more useful than mayors usually do. He had come to my attention by single-handedly striking down a rampaging minotaur. Nonetheless, he had to be removed. I convicted him of the murder of the dead dwarf. He was sentenced to 200 days in prison.
Here's where things get tricky. One, in Dwarf Fortress your control over the dwarves is tenuous. I could not, for example, set the mayor's sentence; that was up to the sheriff. Two, you can't just off a dwarf, generally. I couldn't sic the militia on him, but clearly the justice system wasn't going to handle him either.
I spent his jail term building a deathtrap: a mechanical series of glass spikes operated by a lever which I could order the mayor to pull. Unfortunately, when his sentence was up, the mayor didn't get straight to lever-pulling. In fact, his first act as a free dwarf was to chow down on the sheriff. Then, perhaps as an apértif, he helped himself to the fortress's most distinguished chef. This deed, at least, had witnesses. Then he proceeded to my deathtrap. Which, it became apparent, didn't work. It was a simple design error; he stood too close to the lever and the spikes didn't reach him.
At least he was occupied for the time being, diligently pulling the lever back and forth. It gave me the chance to lock him in the room, but I couldn't just keep him there. As the most charismatic dwarf in the fortress, he kept getting re-elected mayor, garnering support, I suppose, by whispering through the keyhole.
We were onto Plan C. I had the dwarves cut a hole in the ceiling directly above the vampire nee mayor, and then ordered them to fill the room with water.
I should have figured that dwarfpires don't drown. There was nothing for it; I had to let him out so the sheriff could arrest him again. The effect of opening a closet completely full of water was about what you would expect.
Justice, which had been Plan A, was now plan D as well. For the mayor's two additional murders, one of which had ten witnesses, he was sentenced to... 400 days in prison. Of course.
So I needed a Plan E. When he was tied securely in his jail cell, I removed the door and built a ballista in the jail cell opposite, so I could fire giant crossbow bolts directly at him. I had my siege engineer sharpen logs for the purpose, figuring that if a 300-pound wooden stake wouldn't fix my vampire problem, nothing would.
I hope that was wrong, because after five wooden ballista arrows, fired at a space of perhaps 15 feet, the vampire is thoroughly bruised and not much else. And that's where I stand now. I'm hoping that copper arrowheads will have more effect, because I'm running out of options.
The Middle.
Without being too harsh, it was not what we had hoped for. It partly came down to a grammatical quirk. I had wanted to see art from video games, perhaps concept art, stills, and things of that nature. What I got was more an exhibit explaining how video games could be art themselves. So, you see, it was something like picking up The Art of War expecting it to contain reproductions of the Bayeux Tapestry and Guernica. Something like, but not exactly.
The problem really was that we were well ahead of the exhibit. We needed no convincing that video games were legitimately art, in the same sense that movies are. The question of whether video games deserve to be in a museum is like the question of whether a cheetah deserves to be in a zoo. It's not a matter of classification or merit. Onla a small subset of art is best experienced in a museum.
You'll hear no complaints from me if you assert that video games have narrative, evocative, salutary potential. The booklet accompanying the exhibit, according to Girlfriend (who read it), was a bit breathless about this, praising the medium's achievements with a convert's zeal.
Anyway, we weren't the intended audience, really. In this (and perhaps only this) we were more sophisticated than the mainstream museum crowd. I would have liked to see a room full of stills from Myst, instead of a large cabinet where it could be played, accompanied by a paragraph on how immersive it was.
It was a nice, nostalgic afternoon, though, of the sort I am likely to miss this year when other people go to PAX. And this is not to say that I didn't see or learn anything new. I had not known, for example, that Doom 2 was the first game to employ a "game engine." Girlfriend also pointed out the unusual number of major installments in video game history that are #2 in a series.
Speaking of the narrative potential of video games, though, I've been sucked back into Dwarf Fortress with the last few batches of updates, and more of a story has come of it than I had expected. Though it's not completed, I will share it with you.
My fortress had a vampire. Some dwarves were waking up mysteriously pale, and one was found dead in his room, completely drained of blood. So the search was on.
It was the mayor. I found out by accident that he had come to the fortress under a pseudonym. Examining his history revealed a suspiciously long list of previous residences. Most damning, he couldn't remember the last time he had drunk alcohol, which in a fortress that was practically afloat in booze, was almost proof positive that he had developed an unnatural thirst.
This was dismaying. Here was a mayor who had made himself more useful than mayors usually do. He had come to my attention by single-handedly striking down a rampaging minotaur. Nonetheless, he had to be removed. I convicted him of the murder of the dead dwarf. He was sentenced to 200 days in prison.
Here's where things get tricky. One, in Dwarf Fortress your control over the dwarves is tenuous. I could not, for example, set the mayor's sentence; that was up to the sheriff. Two, you can't just off a dwarf, generally. I couldn't sic the militia on him, but clearly the justice system wasn't going to handle him either.
I spent his jail term building a deathtrap: a mechanical series of glass spikes operated by a lever which I could order the mayor to pull. Unfortunately, when his sentence was up, the mayor didn't get straight to lever-pulling. In fact, his first act as a free dwarf was to chow down on the sheriff. Then, perhaps as an apértif, he helped himself to the fortress's most distinguished chef. This deed, at least, had witnesses. Then he proceeded to my deathtrap. Which, it became apparent, didn't work. It was a simple design error; he stood too close to the lever and the spikes didn't reach him.
At least he was occupied for the time being, diligently pulling the lever back and forth. It gave me the chance to lock him in the room, but I couldn't just keep him there. As the most charismatic dwarf in the fortress, he kept getting re-elected mayor, garnering support, I suppose, by whispering through the keyhole.
We were onto Plan C. I had the dwarves cut a hole in the ceiling directly above the vampire nee mayor, and then ordered them to fill the room with water.
I should have figured that dwarfpires don't drown. There was nothing for it; I had to let him out so the sheriff could arrest him again. The effect of opening a closet completely full of water was about what you would expect.
Justice, which had been Plan A, was now plan D as well. For the mayor's two additional murders, one of which had ten witnesses, he was sentenced to... 400 days in prison. Of course.
So I needed a Plan E. When he was tied securely in his jail cell, I removed the door and built a ballista in the jail cell opposite, so I could fire giant crossbow bolts directly at him. I had my siege engineer sharpen logs for the purpose, figuring that if a 300-pound wooden stake wouldn't fix my vampire problem, nothing would.
I hope that was wrong, because after five wooden ballista arrows, fired at a space of perhaps 15 feet, the vampire is thoroughly bruised and not much else. And that's where I stand now. I'm hoping that copper arrowheads will have more effect, because I'm running out of options.
The Middle.
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