Up, up & oy vey

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:57:11 -0400

Cinephiles want to know: is Up as great as Monsters, Inc., the Citizen Kane of animated kids' movies? The answer is, "No, not hardly." But it's pretty good.

Monsters, Inc. achieved greatness, even sublimity, while entertaining the masses. It delivered an indictment against society while serving up pratfalls and making toddlers giggle helplessly. It had something on its mind, but unlike so many of today's "serious" animations, it squared the circle. That is to say, it fully acknowledged the awfulness of our modern predicament and yet arrived at its federally-mandated happy ending in an honest and satisfying way – and made it look easy.

This issue of the happy ending is a rock upon which greater ships than Up have dashed themselves to flinders. Drama, not to mention honesty, compels us to acknowledge the grim tidings all around us—the exigencies of the box office, on the other hand, require good feelings all around when the lights come up. Sometimes this emphasis on seeing the sunny side of life pervades an entire work, and ends in travesty and abomination (cf. Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful). Other times, the picture will shift gears (with much grinding of the clutch and smoking of the engine) from grim to upbeat halfway through (cf. Wall-E). Most often, the thumb's-up finish is simply tacked on to an otherwise harrowing work as an afterthought (cf. L.A. Confidential). As hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, the happy ending is art's tribute to commerce. It's show biz, rendering unto Caesar his due, which is the American way (not just the Roman). If the only way we could see Guernica were to have Mickey Mouse cavorting in one corner of the canvas, wouldn't that be a small price to pay?

Yeah, I know. It'd be huge. Anyway, hence ergo thus, Up. Yes, it's an animated movie, and it would be absurd to preface a review with such a highfalutin prelude—except that this cartoon, like Monsters, Inc. (and dished up by many of the same Pixar hands) is wrestling with some serious issues. I suppose you could sum up the overall thrust of the Big Themes of Up under the heading Loss: indignities of old age and decrepitude, bereavement, false idols with feet of clay, etc. But these themes are opened up, often beautifully, and then abandoned. In Monsters, Inc., the climactic chase followed organically from the establishing story and was beautiful and goofy: asinine in a profoundly gratifying way. That's not the case with the big finish in Up, and that's not just because the moviemakers are straining to reach a happy ending. Part of the reason for the shopworn feel of the second half is technological : at times, the strain of aiming narrative and animation towards an iMax 3-D presentation begins to show. Mainstream animated movies now labor under a set of self-imposed rules that make crafting a sonnet seem like the carefree freedom of stream-of-consciousness blather.

Still, there's much here to admire. Remind me to tell you what, some time. B MINUS.

Alpha Chimp the First

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:40:17 -0400

Corporate treachery and gamesmanship, all in four easy-to-read panels. Strong language, feces-throwing.

Great Moments in Teenage Humiliation

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:45:09 -0400

First in an occasional series. Click here to see the whole comic saga. Relive yesteryear’s fun, excitement and deep-seated sense of shame. Strong language, sexual situations, projectile vomiting.

The Spectacle Pure

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:29:44 -0400

In which, after the jump, we have a very unpleasant poem which appears to cast into question not only the value of the late Beijing Olympics but even spectator sports themselves. Somebody call DHS!

Paradise Lost by Sammy the Bull Gravano, as told to John Milton

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:33:32 -0400

WHAT IF, when John Milton wrote his towering epic of Christian transcendence, his TRUE SUBJECT was actually SAMMY THE BULL GRAVANO? — Don’t pretend you’ve never thought about this.

The Necessary Evil

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:17:01 -0400

At the advertising agency where I used to work the writers would post their bickering on the communal email for all to admire and enjoy. So I wrote a poem about it. That’ll show ‘em!

Advertising Song

To arms! No doubt, all those with a lick of sense
Will swiftly leap to the Creative team’s defense.

Or will they? The corporate world may gaze on, appalled,
At the antics of the Creatives, as they are (sardonically?) called.
They may watch aghast as the bards (please don’t call them hacks)
Now suffer, and now inflict their verbal attacks,
And wheel, parry, thrust and bicker ‘til the dawn.
The business types may gaze, amused—then blink—and then stifle a yawn.

Taunting the Hunters

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 22:40:24 -0400

A young man publishes a novel he’s written, his first. The critics don’t like it, and say so, in various cutting and amusing ways, insulting the work, the man, his ancestry. An onlooker clucks his tongue and says, “Ah, it’s as if an innocent young fawn has strayed into the middle of a field, into the range of the hunters’ shotguns.” A second onlooker disagrees: “No, it’s more like an innocent young fawn has leapt into the middle of field and capered abound, bounding to and fro and waving his antlers at the hunters, taunting them and daring them to shoot.”

So, welcome, hunters, to my blog!