No New Ideas?

The common complaint about Hollywood is that "there are no new ideas."  Generally there are new ideas, but most of Hollywood is just updating old ideas in new packages.  Movie studios are more interested in making money than making stories, which is why there is a plethora of sequels, remakes and movies based on famous books (the forthcoming Girl with the Dragon Tattoo starring Daniel Craig takes two of these). The studios know that these are bankable as they are already commercial successes.  Why take a chance and lose money when you can just cash in on the gravy train that is already established.
     As for new ideas, I was watching Person of Interest -- I like this show and its premise -- when I thought "He's kind of like a modern day Lone Ranger."  Then I thought about it some more and that's exactly what it is.  The main character, Reese, played by Jim Caviezel, is a wanted man, former special forces military man with a heart of gold who's done some bad things in his career.  Fitz, his partner, created a machine for the government that can predict terrorist activities by monitoring ALL communications -- email, cell phone calls, text messages, security cameras -- and then collating the data in context and predicting terrorist activity.  Sometimes it spits out numbers (Social Security numbers of people involved in some way) of more "mundane" crimes: murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, etc.  The government agency Fitz was reporting to didn't care about these numbers, but Fitz did for reasons as of yet (through episode 5 anyway) unexplained.  Fitz, as seen in the flashbacks where he was still working on the machine, is a normal, healthy man.  Now he has a pronounced limp, maybe an artificial leg, back problems and has trouble turning his head on his neck.  His story hasn't been told yet, but I'm sure it's coming.  Whatever had happened to him is the catalyst that pushed him to find Reese and hire him to help the people involved in the "mundane" crimes.
     It's not so much a retelling of the Lone Ranger in modern day (even though, if I remember right, Reese was an Army Ranger) or an update to the character, but let's call him an archetype.  The wanted man who is actually helping people while working outside the law to do it.  If Fitz and Reese ever get caught with what they are doing, they would probably be charged with treason and crimes against the country, as well as violating national security, but I digress.  And while Reese doesn't wear a mask or leave silver bullets, his reasons and methods for helping others are very similar to the Masked Man.
     Another archetype that's made it to the small screen again, once I started thinking about this, is Robin Hood, and I don't mean the BBC's version from a couple years ago.  I mean Leverage.  Timothy Hutton's show where they are kind of a revenge organization.  A client contacts them because someone stole like a family heirloom from them and they have no legal recourse to gain it back (lack of evidence, etc.).  Hutton's team do a Mission Impossible type operation, using quasi-legal and sometimes illegal means, to avenge their client.  It is very much a Robin Hood type archetype as he has his band of "merry men" (and women), and their clients are usually poor, the people they are going up against usually rich (having more money to hire expensive lawyers to keep it out of courts, etc).
     I don't plan on analyzing all shows out there for more of these archetypes, but these kind of jumped out at me today.  I don't think Person of Interest has the popularity to sustain itself right now, as I think the Lone Ranger archetype has been overdone to varying degrees the past few years.  He has become an anti-hero archetype (outlaw with heart of gold helping people) in a lot of incarnations and it's becoming tiresome.  Because Hollywood doesn't like new ideas.

School paper on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

The following is a paper I wrote for my Audio Production class a couple years ago.  I got a 20 out of 20 points for it with the comments "Excellent!  Great observation from this great film.  Well written.  Interesting reading."

The sound of this film was fairly subtle throughout, the movie being more focused on the title characters than action.  I believe the main reason for this was partly due to the year the film was mad -- 1969 -- as opposed to today.  I'm sure that the Coen brothers borrowed the sound use of Butch and Sundance for their film No Country for Old Men.
     Music, to me, had the biggest impact on the sound of this film, mainly because it was used so sparsely.  Excluding the closing credits, there were only three instances where music was used.
     The first was in the opening credits, where an effective sound effect was implemented as well.  The opening credits showed a recreated old black and while silent film of "Butch Cassidy's Hole-in-the-Wall Gang" robbing a train.  A sound of a film projector was playing to give it more of a newsreel type of feel from the very early days of film.  A very "open," airy piece of piano music was played over top of the silent film as a counterpoint to the action of the train robbery.  The piano music was slow, moody and nothing like an "action" piece, which is what one would expect in today's filmd.
     The second instnace of music in the movie is probably one of the more famous scenes.  BJ Thomas, later a lead singer for the disco group Blue Velvet, sang a contemporary version of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" as Butch Cassidy rode "the latest technological marvel," a bicycle, around a farm with Sundance's female friend on the handlebars.  Similar to the opening title sequence, no other sound is heard while this song is playing, with the exception of when Butch, while riding the bike backwards, crashes through a fence and into a bullrun, where a bull is standing, watching the crazy man on the bike.  The song pauses until the bull begins to chase Butch out of his pasture.
     The final instance of music occurs when Butch, Sundance and Eta are in Bolivia and they decide to take up robbing banks again.  The music, as established twice before, is the only sound as a montage of the trio rob banks throughout the country.  And, like the second song, there is a pause in the song as the actual sound of the film is brought forward.  The bank robbers are hiding on a tree and begin firing warning shots at the "posse" that is chasing them from their latest heist.  The posse retreats, the robbers laugh and go on to their next escapade, and the song resumes, returning it to a silent film reel.
     Music used in this fashion -- with no other sound effects or dialogue -- give this classic Western the feel of a silent film of the early days of Hollywood.  It's also subtle enough where people would notice the lack of other sound, but might not make the connection to the opening scene and silent filmscores.
     Speech plays a major role in this film as it is mostly character driven, due to its biographical nature.  The scenes where Butch and Sundance are trying to learn Spanish so they can rob banks in Bolivia bring it to a larger awareness.  There aren't many subtle scenes of speech: no whispering, no shouting, not a lot of dynamic feel to the dialogue.  Although it does give us some very memorable lines such as, "I got vision while the rest of the world needs bifocals," and "Hell, the fall'll probably kill ya."
     As far as sound effects go, it was a nice mix of effectiveness, in my view.  The final scene where a part of the Bolivian army has Butch and Sundance pinned down seemed a little forced with the sound effects because ALL of the rifles that were being used sounded exactly the same, regardless of position of the wielder or distance.  The same can be said for the pistols, even if different types of pistols were being fired (as by Butch and Sundance).  I attribute this to the time the movie was made and sound "design" wasn't even really thought of yet (but it wasn't too far off).  This isn't to say that sound effects weren't used effectively, they just sounded very similar.
     Explosions were used in a couple of spots near the beginning of the film to do a quick cut scene, as the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang was robbing the Union Pacific Flyer.
     One other thing I noticed that was quite subtle, and probably would NOT have noticed had it not been for the comment about E.T. and the one "hunter's" keys being used to identify the man.  Most of the middle of the movie has the title characters chased across a couple of states by a lawman named DeFours who wears a white straw hat (I wonder if that's where Kevin Smith got the idea for the mall security guard of the same name and distinguishing headgear in Mallrats).  You never see DeFours, or his posse, except at a great distance.  However, as Butch and Sundance are being followed, you can always hear the distant hoofbeats of the posse.  No individual horses can be distinguished, but there is a distant rumble similar to thunder anytime they are nearing their quarry..  In some scenes, there is nothing in the shot except for a hill that Butch and Sundance had ridden over a couple minutes prior, and the sound has that distinct distant rumble.  Very soon, it daens on you that that particular sound is to be identified with DeFour's posse, and imminent danger to the title characters.
     All in all, the music probably had the greatest impact of sound, being used effectively and sparsely in the movie.  The rumble of hoofbeats was probably a close second, although I wouldn't think of the posse when I hear that sound unless I am watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Captain America an effective movie

Now, I go into this not having seen X-men First Class, and it is a point of contention because of some of the reasons I think Captain America is such a good/effective movie.  I’ll give a little bit about each of the other big movies and why they are so big, and then why Cap blew them away.

Hulk: The first one with Eric Bana was bad, we can all agree.  The one with Edward Norton in the Avengers timeline was much better.  The character deals with anger management issues and the monster inside all of us, according the its creator, Stan Lee.  Although the character has been limited in some of his effectiveness in some stories, being just a rampaging monster, the character has evolved to have an intelligence, but it is still mainly anger focused.  The Norton version of the movie brought this out more.  The Eric Bana one focused more on his relationship with Betty and tried to make it more of a date movie than a comic book movie, and thus brought down both sides of it.

Fantastic Four: both movies were well written, had great effects, decent stories and good actors.  But the FF has never been one of my favorite comics.  I never connected with any of them.  I’ve tried again and again and like the latest incarnation of the Future Foundation (still the FF, but the abbreviation means something different), and now that Spider-man is involved after the Human Torch died, it has a little more potential (I’ll get to that with talking about Spider-man).  I like the new outfits – white with black trim, even looks good on Spidey – and I like where it’s going as a super-science comic with the human side to it with the Thing and the Richards family.

Spider-man: Stan Lee made Spidey as a metaphor for puberty and life’s problems.  Here when Peter Parker is at that age when his body starts changing, the radioactive (or rather genetically altered, in the movie) spider bite really changes him.  He gets all those abilities that are spider-like, yet still has to deal with school, relationships, finding work, taking care of his Aunt May.  It gave a much more human side to a super hero than DC’s Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, etc. ever had.  The first to Spidey movies had this and were good movies.  The third one was “let’s see how much crap we can throw in this movie and keep it under 3 hours.”  Didn’t work for me, or for Marvel apparently which is why they’re rebooting the franchise.

X-men: always one of my favorite books, mainly due to Chris Claremont’s writing from the 70’s through the 80’s.  A bigger metaphor for puberty you will not find (even in Spider-man) as they mutants’ powers emerge at the onset of puberty, and they don’t know what to do with these powers.  That setup didn’t translate well into the movies, but they were still good action/sci-fi yarns, but it’s what made that book so popular because EVERYONE GOES THROUGH PUBERTY.

Watchmen: this one is most comparable to Captain America, because it is also a period piece, and the time of the story has a big impact on what makes it effective or not.  (Starting to see why I had to mention that I haven’t seen First Class yet?)  Watchmen takes place in the height of the Cold War in the 80’s when the threat of nuclear annihilation was at its peak.  If you lived through it, you probably remember it well.  The problem is, most people, even if they lived through it, DON’T remember it that well.  We were really, really close.  And the scary thing is, one of the things that saved us was the Chernobyl disaster.  That’s right.  When the Chernobyl nuclear plant had its meltdown, the USSR couldn’t handle the clean-up.  Mikhail Gorbachev HAD to ask us for help.  It opened the doors to the Soviet Union for the first time and kicked Perestroika and Glasnost into gear.  It didn’t remove the threat of nuclear holocaust, but it cut it back so far that anything other than where we were was a moment of relaxation and peace.  The Watchmen movie tried to convey this in the three hour epic, but that was just the backdrop to the story of the characters.  And since it was only the backdrop, it didn’t come across and made the movie less effective through no fault of anyone’s except time.

Captain America: now we come to why this period piece was so effective.  Everyone knows about WWII and what it was like for our country.  Even if we didn’t live through it (most of us didn’t), it was such a big, long part of our history, and there have been so many movies and tv series about it that most of us actually have an understanding of a lot of what it was like.  In fact, movies about WWII is what’s boosted enlistment into the armed forces for the Iraq and Afghan wars we’ve been fighting.  During WWII, men enlisted so they could go fight Nazis.  Inglorious Basterds is a prime example of America arrogance, if you will, of fighting and winning a war, and it takes place in WWII.  Steve Rogers has similar ambitions and is such a likeable, human character that you can’t help but feel for him when he gets rejected time and again when all he wants to do is HELP.  It seems less like a comic book movie and more like an underdog movie with a couple of sci-fi characters (Cap and Red Skull).  Since he’s still mostly human with heightened strength, he’s less comic book, and more effective.  It’s the same reason a well-written Batman movie (the Christian Bale movies) are so good.  He’s still a human, but at the peak of perfection.  Once they started changing that, the movies got worse (Batman and Robin).  But this is why I feel Captain America was a good movie.  The character was more human and involved in his time period that everyone can relate to.

Tiresome Organizations

Bothersome people are everywhere.  Non-profit organizations collect them, as well.  Leaving an organization with a lot of tiresome, bothersome people, especially one of which you've been a member for awhile, will relieve that feeling of irksomeness in you.

My wife and I recently left an organization that has a lot of tiresome people -- tiresome to us, not necessarily to each other or other people in the organization.  One of the main reasons we found them so bothersome was that there is a prevalent attitude in this local group of intelligence -- which a lot of them are -- but their intelligence, knowledge and experience apply only to skills that apply to that particular organization and not really anywhere else in society.

I understand the want and need to grow and learn new things, but if there is no practical application other than the that organization, I'm not going to concentrate on it or worry about learning too much about it.

I had been working a lot on artistic applications with this organization, things that I could do in my own time without a lot of effort or cost to me or my family.  I could draw and practice calligraphy as it is pure art.  Fake sword fighting might provide some physical workout, but not enough reward for the effort put into it.  I think that shows with the physique of some of the long-time sword fighters in the organization.

I may continue to work on the calligraphy and illumination because I do enjoy it, had enjoyed it even before becoming a member of the organization.  It was something that I was able to do to contribute to the organization, but it wasn't celebrated, it was looked upon as a necessity rather than a contribution.  I had the ability and so it was required of me to do it.  For them.  Not for any reason I might have for wanting to do it, but because I could, I should be doing it for them.

No thanks, I'll take my talent elsewhere where it will be more appreciated.

Cubs vs. Cardinals

Growing up in central Illinois I was caught right in the middle of one of the biggest rivalries in baseball. I'm talking of the Chicago Cubs and the St. Louis Cardinals.

And seeing the fans -- I'd say over 90% of the residents are fans of either of these two teams -- you can tell a lot about the personalities of the fans depending on which of the two teams they root for.

Cubs fans, due mainly to the fact the team hasn't won a World Series in over a century, going almost as long for an appearance in the championships, are hopeful, optomistic people.  The World Series doesn't matter to Cubs fans. They have greater love of the game rather than the outcome.  To Cubs fans it's not about winning or losing, they'll remain loyal even though the Cubs don't regularly make it to the playoffs.

Cardinals fans, on the other hand, are assholes.  That's not right, well, not all the time, just in the way they are during baseball games or around known Cubs fans.  I have never seen a Cubs fan tell a 2-year old child in a Cardinals shirt, "Oh, I'm so sorry that your parents make you wear that shirt." And whenever the Cardinals beat the Cubs, Cards fans have to make sure that EVERYONE knows it, yet if the Cubs win, Cards fans have an attitude of "Oh, so what?  When's the last time you were in the World Series?"

I don't know if Cardinals fans are like this outside of central Illinois, and not all Cardinals fans are like this.  But a lot of them are.  Why?  There was no rivalry like this between the Bears and Rams, or the Cardinals NFL team before they moved to Arizona.  Granted, the Bears' NFL rivalry is with the Green Bay Packers, but it's not as bad as the one between the Cardinals and Cubs.  Is it because it's been so long since the Cubs' World Series appearance?  If so, why does that matter?  Is it elitism on the Cards fans' part?  Is it only because they are both so close to Peoria (where I live)?  Is it maybe a fair weather thing -- i.e. the Cards fans are worse when they are really going strong, but there's still that animosity when they aren't doing so hot?

I've heard some Cardinal fans (I'm friends with a few) who say it's just friendly ribbing.  It doesn't seem that way all the time.  Partly because it's being done all the time.  Even during the off-season, someone will see me in a Cubs hat and decide they have to say something about it.  Why?  I don't bug you about your choice of headwear, or your lack of taste in music because you're singing Lady Gaga.  Yet you feel the need to berate me for my choice of baseball team I root for.  I'm above that.  And that's why I like being a Cubs fan.

Stay at Home Dads

There is a social stigma about stay-at-home dads that is a form of sexism.  In our society, men are supposed to go out and work while the women stay at home with the kids.  This is the second most common reason for divorce after money problems.

Men were always the ones to go out and hunt to bring home food.  Those that stay at home now are looked down upon as lazy or "henpecked" (the most recent term being "pussy-whipped").  Even if I work at home as a fiction/freelance writer, I still have to deal with the people who call me "house-husband."  It doesn't matter that I love my son, or that I teach him every day, or that I have no problems cleaning the house -- I mean, I live here, too.  But it doesn't stop our patriarchal society from discriminating against me, even if it is just socially.

The "traditional roles" that are assigned to us, mainly due to the history of our race, have been fought against by women in the equal rights movement.  Women want equal pay for equal work.  Good.  That is only fair.  But on the flip side, men should be able to take care of their children without being looked down upon.  That, too, is only fair.  Men are traditionally stronger, women are traditionally smarter.  Men are more protective, women are more nurturing.

Yet why can't men be both?  Men can also be nurturing, women can also be protective.  There are women that are stronger physically than men.  Women are usually more emotionally stronger, I believe because of having to raise a child. So why can't men gain some of that same strength by raising a child?

There are single dads out there that do it.  Not all dads are deadbeats with their ex-wives/girlfriends.  It's one of those few bad examples getting the most attention.  Do the dads that do it get praised? Nope, they get a "you're doing what you're supposed to anyway, so why should I think you're doing something exceptional."  But when a single mom has issues, oh my god, alert the media, she's got problems, the world needs to stop and focus all its resources in her direction. Dads are lucky to get a pat on the back for a job well done.

I am lucky to have a loving, caring wife who is working and giving me the opportunity to teach our son, work with him and be a stay at home dad who gets to write (my favorite hobby I hope to turn into a career), but it's tough right now and money's tight.  So my non-traditional role might be changing again soon to the more traditional one so that we can survive.