Summer Wrap-Up

When we last left Daniel Johnson, he has just returned home after a fire, and was still worried about what he was going to do when his museum job ended.

Well sportsfans, that's still where I'm at right now. My job at the museum finished, and I'm on the hunt again. The only thing is, I'm wondering how the hell ANYONE gets a job in this business. Sure, I could easily get a job in LA as a waiter or something to pay the rent, just like every other movie star hopeful in the city, but I went to USC film school! I'm not trying to sound like the world owes me everything, because it doesn't; but the fact is, coming out of the production school, I have one hell of a skillset that is just DYING to be put to good use. I'll gladly do anything on any production if it proves that I can actually make a living with the degree I got! Well, not anything...I'd rather not start out as a PA or file paperwork, because if I wind up doing that, then why did I bother going to school in the first place? I am above a few things, right? I mean, top-of-the-class, USC, tons of other skills OTHER than just the film stuff, etc etc etc...don't these things mean anything? At all? Hello....hello...(echo, echo, echo)...?
The thing is, it sucks for anyone to graduate right now, because the economy blows. And it's hard to get into the film industry ANYWAY, so that makes it even harder for a film guy like me. Plus, the actors are about to strike, so even the guys WITH experience are about to be out of a job. However as I understand it, the film industry stays pretty stable in times of economic crisis. During the Depression and World War II, for example, movies were the one industry that kept going. So in some ways yeah, it's tough...but it's steadily tough.

At this point, I want to work for a few years just to see if it's possible, and then I think I'm going to hit up graduate school for animation, because I love animated films just as much as live-action ones. Someday, in my biggest dreams, I'd like to make films that utilize both animation and live action. It will happen...I just have to keep working at it.
The only thing is, how the hell does one get to that point? It it just luck? Friends? Hard work? Charisma? Answer: yes. But there's got to be some rough plan as to how forge the path ahead to finally do my own stuff, and I don't have that yet. That's what I really need to figure out.

Anyway, all this job talk is depressing me...and I'm not even a week out of my last job. I want to lift my spirits by instead talking about how thankful I am that this has been one of the most rewarding summers for me in a long time. In earlier posts I mentioned the trip to the east coast, and the fires, etc. But working as a science teacher at the museum was also tons of fun. Being able to have your JOB be teaching kids about science, while hiking outdoors and sharing the stuff you love about nature was pretty awesome. And unlike some of my friends with their "film jobs, I've actually managed to stay pretty sun-kissed and healthy this summer. My other job, working with the Quasars at the museum, was also tons of fun.
The trip out to Santa Cruz Island was a blast. We went on some very difficult hikes, but riding in the back of the trucks with a bunch of teenagers made me nostalgic for how the whirlwind of high school. It was great to see these teens grow up a tad this summer. And being someone not THAT much older than them, I was never completely excluded from their drama as they tried to figure their lives out. I like to think that I helped some of them out a bit in more ways than as just their supervisor. Maybe their role model? Maybe...
One thing that happened on Santa Cruz Island was that I possibly saved two people's lives(!). After an incredibly difficult hike, we wound up on a long, secluded beach reminiscent of the one out of the ending of "Planet of the Apes." Naturally we all decided to go bodysurfing in the ocean.
The water was fairly cold, but we are all outdoorsy kids, so we could take it. Claire, my fellow instructor, is about to start her first semester at Stanford this year (in fact, she's probably leaving in a few days). I noticed she was getting pretty chilled, so I asked her if she was ready to go back in to the beach, and that I'd go in with her. She said she was willing to go in a little bit.
Anyway, about five minutes later, I realized something was wrong. A lot of us had been caught in an undertow, and were getting sucked out to sea. Claire in particular, was getting taken far out.
I yelled at everyone to put their feet on the ocean bottom, and swam to Claire to see if she was OK. She wasn't. She was completely white, and shivering uncontrollably. When she realized what was going on with the undertow, she started to panic.
So I grabbed her and pulled her back in to the point where she could walk to the beach. I then swam back out to see if everyone else was OK. They weren't.
Several other teens were in the process of getting sucked out to sea. I told everyone to freeze and plant their feet on the ground. They all did. However, Maria was also getting taken by the undertow. Nathaniel, trying to prove how strong he was, was trying to pull her in. Of course, Nathaniel may be one of the more athletic kids in the group, but that doesn't make him a good swimmer. And he's also somewhat cocky. I shouted at him, "Nathaniel, get your ass back here so I don't have to save you too!" He did so, and then I swam out and pulled Maria in.
At this point, I was getting pretty exhausted. With Claire it had been a burst of adrenaline, but with Maria I really exhausted myself getting her safe. Afterwards, I stumbled up on the beach and passed out.
It's definitely possible Claire and Maria might have been OK and escaped the undertow, but I'm not so sure. In Claire's case, I'm pretty certain she would have been in serious trouble had I not been there. Nobody else in the program is anywhere near as good a swimmer as I am. I like to think that, were I to get severely depressed at some point in the future, and were an angel named Clarence to show me what my life were like had I never been born, that the day I saved Claire and Maria would be one of the events he would show me. I do feel like a bit of a hero.
Also, for YOUR safety: if you ever DO find yourself caught in an undertow (without someone like me there to save you!) to escape you should not try to fight it. You should swim parallel to shore, and slowly cut across diagonally. In my case, I fought against the current, but only because I was strong enough to do so, and I was worried about how much time I might need to help out others.
Also, a couple of weeks ago the teens had their final presentations. I have to admit, I got a tad teary-eyed, if only because the summer had been so great, and I honestly have no idea when I'm going to have such fun and wholesome experiences at a job again.
And lastly, I want to say that Claire has got to be one of the most fantastic young women I've ever met. And for the record, I'm saying this more as an older brother than anything else. You are a beautiful, capable, smart young woman, and I know you are going to do awesome things with your life. Good luck!

OK, now that all that mushy stuff is somewhat out of the way, on to some movie reviews. First off, I want to say that I made a mistake in my last post when I said I hadn't reviewed "The Dark Knight" yet. I had...I just forgot. You can see that review two posts ago.

1) "Under the Same Moon" I was not looking forward to seeing this movie, but my sister really wanted to see it. And often what my sister wants, my sister gets.
The movie is about how a young Mexican boy manages to cross the border in order to see his mother living in Los Angeles. I was worried that the movie would be rather stereotypical, depicting whites at hateful bigots, but luckily that isn't entirely the case. Some whites are shown as helpful, others are shown as not. In general the movie balances it out fairly well. Of course, there are a few times where they show white characters being complete assholes, to the point of excess and caricature. And the Mexican workers are shown to be "poor hopeless victims" a few times more than my liking. But even so, it was a much better movie than I expected.
Of course, as a "white privileged male" myself, I would argue that the film does not show both sides of the border issue very well. It is kinda true that we need to have restrictions on our borders. The Mexican immigrant issue is not an easy one, and much more complex than what is depicted here. In the movie, it's generally just, "Oh, this poor boy needs to escape to see his mom..." in order to tug at the heartstrings and make you hate La Migra.
The best parts of the movie are when the boy meets up with a man named Enrique, who at first wants to have nothing to do with him, and a sort of odd "buddy movie" starts up. The resolution of their storyline is really well done.
Also it's interesting that to understand the movie perfectly, you have to be bilingual (though you can always use subtitles), since the movie is practically split half-and-half between Spanish and English.
So all-in-all this was a better movie than I was expecting, being more than just pro-immigrant propoganda. It's certainly a lot better than "Real Women Have Curves," a movie that dealt with similar themes and somehow got great reviews despite being complete crap in THIS white privileged American male's opinion...

2) "The Savages" This is a very well-acted poignant movie starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as adult siblings who have to take care of their aging father (with those two in the leads, is it any surprise it's well-acted?). It's a good movie, but I had a hard time getting into it because I have personally never dealt with experiences like the one they face, being that I am only 22. Give me a movie about grade-school, high school, college, or twenty-somethings, and I'll totally feel ya. But I have no idea what it's like to be middle-aged and putting one's parents in a nursing home, so I had a hard time sympathizing. Yet from what the movie showed me, it doesn't seem like a time in my life I'm looking forward to.

3) "Beowulf" I had intentionally avoided this movie because of what I felt it represented; a complete lack of care for real actors and real performances. What's the point of recreating people exactly, if you're going to just make them look like REAL people all over again? The point of animation is to do something new that can't be done by any other means. At the very least, you should stylize it a bit.
In the end, I felt the same way about "Beowulf" as I expected myself to. The action scenes are pretty incredible. Beowulf's story about defeating sea monsters in one of the coolest parts of the movie, as is the sequence in the end with the enormous dragon. However, the CG technology, while impressive, just can't measure up to real actors. It's much better to handle these fantasy movies the way "Lord of the Rings" did, with real actors, real locations, and CG monsters only where you need 'em.
I did think one interesting use of the CG was for Beowulf himself, "played" by Ray Winstone. Ray Winstone is relatively portly guy, but he has a great rough-and-tough voice with the perfect epic quality. So, they created a Beowulf character that matched Ray Winstone's movements and had his voice, but looked the way an epic hero he should look. I'll admit, that was a creative use.
Also, the story is fairly weak, and doesn't hold together very well, and there are some gross historical inaccuracies. And Crispin Glover's performance is laughable as Grendel, seeing as he spends the whole time screaming like a maniac. The guy must really be bonkers.
So yeah, Beowulf represented a big step down in cinematic achievement for me. Sure, the technology is impressive, but is it RIGHT? I don't think so.

4) "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" I'm not big on French films for whatever reason, but this one is worth checking out. It's based on the true autobiography of a guy who has a stroke and gets paralyzed. I was captured by the movie from the get-go, and only realized it was autobiographical at the end. Wow!
The first chunk of the movie is the most interesting, as it tells most of the action through the POV of the main character, as he is paralyzed and watches the people around him taking care of him, and we get to hear his inner thoughts. The French subtitles at times were a bit confusing, since a major plot device of the movie is how he spells out words, and French words are often of course spelled differently than English words, but this is still a great film. I'll give it to the French on this one.

5) "The Hunting Party" Somehow I had heard nothing about this movie when my dad rented it. It's actually a lot of fun. Richard Gere and Terence Howard star as reporters who go undercover in Bosnia and almost single-handedly capture one of the lead terrorists that the United States has been "utilizing" tons of money looking for.
It's based on a true story, but the movie never pretends that it hasn't taken dramatic liberties with what actually happens. A lot of detractors have criticized the movie for being inaccurate, but the movie warns you in the opening credits with the creative line, "Only the ridiculous parts of this movie are true." So clearly, the filmmakers are having fun, and they let themselves off the hook from the get-go.
The acting is good, Richard Gere (whom I sometimes dislike) is in top form, and I had a good time. Check it out if you're into political espionage stuff.

6) "Primer" This movie got great reviews, and I'm not sure why. It was shot for hardly any money, and I'm always a fan of indie filmmakers who are able to do that, but after a certain point, the movie just doesn't make any sense.
In the movie two twenty-something guys stumble upon a way to create a time machine. That's cool, 'cuz I love time travel stuff. But then things start to get weird and confusing.
I'm generally pretty smart about movies that have multiple plot twists and require concentration in order to figure out. But this one had me utterly baffled.
The writer/director doesn't seem to get that in a movie with twists, it's cool if you are always a step ahead of the audience, and the viewers have to work hard to figure everything out. But you have to give them time to DO that. In "Fight Club," "Twelve Monkeys," "The Sixth Sense," "The Usual Suspects," etc etc etc, once the big twist pops up, there is always a few beats where the audience gets to figure things out and go "WHOOOOAAAAAA" to themselves. But in "Primer," just as we're about to try and piece together one piece of the convoluted puzzle, another one hits us leaving us even more confused. And so they pile on. The film is so short the director certainly could have afforded time to sit back and give the audience a moment to breath. But no dice. Don't ask me what happened in this movie because I can't tell you. It's certainly better than any Richard Kelly piece of shit, because "Primer" actually does seem like it has something going on that makes sense if you allowed yourself time to figure it all out, whereas "Donnie Darko" and "Southland Tales" were just worthless drivel that didn't fit together, no matter how you slice it. Still, it's annoying that after "Primer" I felt like I needed to have a degree in advanced physics to even begin to understand what was going on, and the worst part was I didn't really care enough to bother trying to figure it out anyway. And I'm a guy who likes time travel movies and plot twists!
I honestly suspect critics saw this thing and gave it good reviews because they were too proud to admit THEY had no idea what was going on either.

7) "Tropic Thunder" I was a tad let down by "Tropic Thunder," but I still had a good time. I was hoping for another piece of comedic brilliance from Stiller a la "Zoolander," but that's not entirely what I ended up with.
The main issue with the movie is that it tries to have it's action movie and make fun of it too, and the two things don't quite go hand-in-hand. This is too bad, because I feel like this should have been able to work, but somehow didn't.
Robert Downey Jr is side-splitting as expected, as is most of the rest of the cast. Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey, Nick Nolte, Steve Coogan, and Danny McBride are all hilarious too in their scenes. I wasn't as wild about Tom Cruise as many others were, but he's fairly funny as the head producer hack. The real dullard of the movie is, disappointingly, Ben Stiller himself. His character isn't funny at all, and his scenes drag.
And the movie definitely has its moments. My favorite part is one of the fake trailers at the beginning with Tobey McGuire, entitled "Satan's Alley," as well as the moment when the actors are first dropped off in the jungle and their director (played by Steve Coogan) "magically" disappears (you have to see it to know what I'm talking about).
But all in all, it wasn't quite what I was expecting, and the action gets in the way of the farce more than it should have. Stiller can't decide when he should be pulling jokes, and when he should be blowing stuff up and delivering us a solid Rambo-esque action picture, and because of this, he delivers neither as well as he should have. It's too bad.

8) "The Apartment" I caught this one on TCM the other day and LOVED it. It's an old Billy Wilder black-and-white classic starring Jack Lemmon and Shirely MacClaine. It's surprisingly risque for the time it was made. Jack Lemmon is a guy who rents out his apartment to higher-ups in the company he works for in order to get ahead, as the higher-ups use his apartment for sex, drinking, and general debauchery. However, when Lemmon falls for a woman (MacClaine) that his boss is taking to his apartment, things get complicated.
The movie deals with heavy stuff for an old-fashioned comedy. Sex, infidelity, and suicide are all subjects weighed heavily upon, and at one point in the middle the movie gets downright depressing when MacClaine tries to kill herself. But this is still a great romantic comedy. See it with a nice girl who likes old-fashioned movies, and she'll love you forever!
This goes without saying, but the movie is also incredibly dated. But luckily it's aged well, so that it's dated in all the ways that make certain things funnier that weren't funny at the time it was made. Seeing how Jack Lemmon lives makes 1960 really seems like the Dark Ages compared to our world of iPhones, Facebook, and TiVo today.

So there's a relatively good summer update. Hopefully next time I write something here, I'll have a job lined up and ready to go.