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The Mythology of Heroes

December 6, 06 //
7

Heroes [stillframe]If you haven’t seen NBC’s Heroes, I’d sug­gest either Tivo’ing it or watch­ing it every Mon­day (9PM/EST). Next to Lost, it’s been one of the only shows in recent years that I’ve been so involved with — includ­ing hav­ing side con­ver­sa­tions with friends and fam­ily — and that’s due to a few fac­tors that make the show so engrossing.

Apart from the great act­ing, the writ­ing con­tin­ues to amaze me because the story is chock full of inter­est­ing twists, turns and free falls.

There are so many lay­ers and angles the writ­ers have cho­sen to explore and the story itself is rich in char­ac­ter explo­ration and inter­ac­tion. At it’s sur­face it seems like just a show about peo­ple with var­i­ous tal­ents and pow­ers, but if you look fur­ther you begin to unravel the puz­zle and mythol­ogy that is Heroes, which tran­scends the small screen in the form of an online comic and web blog.

Over the course of the first sea­son I’ve made some men­tal notes (mostly spoiler-free) and I’d like to share some of those with you. In turn, I invite you to share your own, as I know we all have our own thoughts and the­o­ries on where the story arch might lead and where it’ll con­tinue to go.

The­o­ries on Heroes

  • Bib­li­cal names used for some of the main char­ac­ters; Gabriel (arch angel), Mica, Eden and Peter.
  • Over­all story arch (so far) has a delib­er­ate sense of urgency and fore­shad­ow­ing: some plot points uncov­ered, ques­tions both answered and unanswered
  • Reminds me a bit of Steven King’s The Stand in that a group of peo­ple, who pre­vi­ously had no con­tact with each other, have come together for a greater purpose
  • The writ­ing is multi-faceted and intrigu­ing, much like Lost, and while it’s inten­tion­ally seri­al­ized it does seem more self-contained than Lost.
  • The char­ac­ters them­selves and their sto­ries are intrigu­ing because of the emo­tional state they share; urgency and for the most part a deep rooted nonac­cep­tance of their tal­ents, almost a resilient self-doubt.
  • Hiro (named appro­pri­ately) comes across as the glue hold­ing every­thing together. He seems to be the favorite for most view­ers and that’s because of his per­son­al­ity and will­ing­ness to work within the lim­i­ta­tions of his power.
  • Mr. Ben­nett (Claire’s father and code­named: HRG for Horned Rim Glasses) seems almost as if his align­ment is neu­tral. He’ll pro­tect those he cares for, but also obeys his supe­ri­ors’ wishes. The writ­ers have men­tioned that he is a but a cog in the big­ger wheel that is his employer and at the moment their true inten­tions and/or motives are still unclear
  • The Hait­ian, while mys­te­ri­ous and obey­ing of HRG’s com­mands, seems like he has his own motives beyond the scope of his employer


Now, what about your the­o­ries? If you have some, please share by com­ment­ing or send­ing me an email at erik(at)kartooner.com.
 

Budgeting Special Effects

November 28, 06 //
1

Iron Man posterKCRW’s The Busi­ness hosted by Claude Brodesser-Akner is both a radio show and pod­cast deal­ing with the inner work­ings of the busi­ness of Hollywood.

Claude’s inter­views with direc­tors, screen­writ­ers, adver­tis­ing exec­u­tives and actors/actresses are often fas­ci­nat­ing, if not enlight­en­ing, espe­cially if you share an inter­est in how films are cre­ated like I do.

In his inter­view with actor/director Jon Favreau enti­tled “No Spe­cial Effects, It’s Really Direc­tor Jon Favreau”, Jon reveals his love/hate rela­tion­ship with CGI effects and why home brewed effects are still rel­e­vant and use­ful. His phi­los­o­phy is that while com­puter gen­er­ated imagery has its place (namely a tool­box of end­less pos­si­bil­ity) it can also cloud the visual aes­thetic of a movie.

While CGI has improved over the years, pro­vid­ing the back­bone for things like sci-fi vis­tas and mytho­log­i­cal crea­tures as well upping the ante on dis­as­ter sequences it’s also — in most cases — imme­di­ately rec­og­niz­able if it doesn’t blend in with live action.

Recently Favreau was cho­sen to direct the film adap­ta­tion of Iron Man, a task not to be taken lightly and even though the film itself has a much big­ger bud­get than his other films, he’s also made the deci­sion to bud­get the spe­cial effects. His rea­son­ing is two-fold; that the film’s bud­get is tar­geted at a spe­cific amount and to effec­tively blend CGI with live action with­out going overboard.

In all hon­esty, this is some­thing that I wish more direc­tors (includ­ing George Lucas) would come to terms with. Audi­ences are typ­i­cally over­whelmed with joy when a superb CGI sequence is pulled off but to echo Favreau’s thoughts, in most cases it’s eas­ily noticed and can take you out of the movie, detach­ing you from the film’s oth­er­wise engross­ing atmos­phere and aesthetic.

Yet, to play devil’s advo­cate I sup­pose it’s a tricky thing to avoid and I’d imag­ine why most direc­tors and pro­duc­ers go out on a limb blind­folded, hop­ing that what­ever is put together by their mas­ters of illu­sion comes across suc­cess­fully not only in a visual man­ner but also allow­ing var­i­ous CG ele­ments to inter­act with live action in a real­is­tic way. 

Rolling with Cars

November 21, 06 //
3

Lightning McQueen [Pixar]

After releas­ing Find­ing Nemo — one of my all-time favorites, right up there with Toy Story — Pixar announced that they were work­ing on a film about cars. When I first heard the news I think I might’ve been read­ing an issue of Wired and sat in disbelief.

While the talk­ing ani­mal shtick has worn out its wel­come, there’s a cer­tain safety net that accom­pa­nies an ani­mated film of that nature. Espe­cially con­sid­er­ing that talk­ing ani­mals is a for­mula that has been used by sev­eral ani­ma­tion com­pa­nies (Dis­ney and Warner Broth­ers comes to mind) in the past and for the most part, if done cor­rectly, appeals to a vast audience.

While I passed up the oppor­tu­nity to see the movie in the the­ater I did man­age to rent it this past week and it’s safe to say that Cars, despite it’s main char­ac­ters being talk­ing vehi­cles, does work and only because Pixar is at the helm. I’m not entirely sure whether some­one else with this mate­r­ial would’ve been able to make it as inter­est­ing and worth watch­ing, which goes to show that Pixar could prob­a­bly make talk­ing rocks watchable.

The plot is sur­face deep, but the gen­eral out­line is that it involves a pompous NASCAR race car named Light­ning McQueen (per­fectly voiced by Owen Wil­son) who through the course of the movie hum­bles him­self thanks to a few small town denizens who teach him how to slow down in life.

There’s a life les­son here that resounds in all of us, that life is some­times too fast paced for us to real­ize that every­thing is com­ing at us at a blur. It’s been tack­led before in movies but never using a car as the pro­tag­o­nist, who is quite lit­er­ally the embod­i­ment of fast-paced life.

On the other side of the spec­trum, there’s even a deeper les­son about how we are will­ing to sac­ri­fice beauty to shave a few min­utes off our travel time. In the movie, it’s Route 66 that at one point in time flour­ished with tourists and car enthu­si­asts and now stands as reminder of what once was and will never be.

The movie itself is full of chuck­les from the sup­port­ing cast and when it’s all said and done it really does stay with you. I’m an advo­cate of slow­ing down every once in a while, tak­ing a step back, enjoy­ing the sweeter aspects of life (like love, fam­ily and rela­tion­ships) and fig­ur­ing things out instead of let­ting every­thing fall into place.

As the Racal Flatts’ song ‘Life is a High­way’ tells us, “Life’s like a road that you travel on, When there’s one day here and the next day gone.” 

Dead Like Who?

November 9, 06 //
3

Dead Like MeIt just so hap­pens that the major­ity of tele­vi­sion shows that I hap­pen to embrace are typ­i­cally well– writ­ten, witty and intelligent.

You can say that most of what’s on TV rarely includes one of these attrib­utes let alone all three of them. What we have today, aside from the newly charted dra­mas, are the same old life­less, unfunny sit­coms and real­ity shows.

While dra­matic shows like Lost and the recent NBC hit Heroes have effec­tively cap­tured the 1950’s seri­al­ized for­mat (“Stay tuned next time to see what hap­pens…”), they, like the the old ser­ial dra­mas that they mimic are hard to fol­low if you don’t stay com­mit­ted week to week.

Therein lies a crit­i­cal flaw in this kind of seri­al­ized for­mat, that the episodes them­selves are rarely self con­tained so you bet­ter make sure Tivo is in sync and you’re pay­ing atten­tion. Yet, that’s also the fun of it all because it really is about what lurks behind the cor­ner, the twists, turns and char­ac­ter clashing.

One of the great things about the Sci-Fi chan­nel — and The Car­toon Net­work — is that they breathe life into shows that have long since been can­celed, although I’m still wait­ing on a Brisco County marathon, even if it finally got it’s own DVD set.

One such show, Dead Like Me had an inter­est­ing premise — before Show­time axed it pre­ma­turely — that didn’t fol­low con­ven­tional tele­vi­sion plot lines. Rather it focused on a group of Grim Reapers (yes, of the cloak and scythe vari­ety) that were assigned a new vic­tim each week, via a scrawled upon post-it note. The inter­est­ing aspect is that each of these indi­vid­u­als are unique in their own way and they each share a dif­fer­ent point in time that they orig­i­nally occupied.

There’s a star­let from Gone with the Wind (on-set mishap), a rugged cop played by A Dif­fer­ent World’s Jas­mine and a smarmy, witty and yet sym­pa­thetic Eng­lish chap, and that’s just to name a few. Each in the group looks as they once did when they were alive to one another, but to the out­side world they look dif­fer­ent in appear­ance so as to not spook the living.

Their boss, the “Head Grim”, is played by Mandy Patinkin (Inigo Mon­toya from the Princess Bride) and he basi­cally noti­fies them of whom to reap while pass­ing out post-it’s in their offi­cial meet­ing place, a reg­u­lar Mom and Pop café. How­ever, they do not take the life of their vic­tim, no, that grue­some task is del­e­gated to these crea­tures — which look like a cross between a Grem­lin and a por­cu­pine — called “gravelings”.

While it all sounds a bit off kil­ter it makes way for bril­liant writ­ing and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment, even if the sub­ject mat­ter is a bit on the “grim” side. It’s just unfor­tu­nate that Showtime’s exec­u­tives gave it the boot before it could really flour­ish as an orig­i­nal series that could have stood on its own.

If you’re inter­ested in check­ing out some­thing new (or old, depend­ing on how you look at it), I’d rec­om­mend watch­ing the pilot, snatch­ing the set from Net­flix or Best Buy, or tun­ing in to the Sci-Fi net­work to catch the series before it’s 2-season offer­ing wears thin. 

How I came to tolerate MySpace

June 20, 06 //
11

For years I’ve held off open­ing up, or rather cre­at­ing a MySpace account:“kartooner on Myspace(View my pro­file on MySpace)”:http://www.myspace.com/kartooner purely for rea­sons to pre­vent exploit­ing myself or others.

How­ever, I came to the real­iza­tion that when you look past the neg­a­tive aspects and focus instead on the pos­i­tive out­come of recon­nect­ing with peo­ple that you might have lost touch with, well then it doesn’t seem so bad.

In fact, it’s safe to say that despite the count­less amount of good and bad press, which any good jour­nal­ist or sane per­son would tell you is just effort­less adver­tis­ing, there are a lot of inter­est­ing out­comes that occur when you set up your own space on the web.

To me, MySpace is a messy com­bi­na­tion of per­sonal jour­nal and media, mixed together with self expres­sion and some­times self reflec­tion. If one were to attempt to map Myspace it would prob­a­bly be nei­ther here nor there.

Frankly, it’s a phe­nom­e­non that would sound won­der­ful on paper or pitched to in front of a group of investors, but in it of itself it’s like a swap meet of indi­vid­u­als com­ing from var­i­ous social, eth­nic, reli­gious and cul­tural back­grounds on dis­play for the world to see, a messy one at that.

It’s also a poten­tially dan­ger­ous breed­ing ground for stalk­ers, but that light has already been shone many times by the media and it’s not worth revis­it­ing that haz­ard since it steers the pur­pose of this arti­cle in another direction.

Back on topic, it’s worth not­ing that within 3 days of acti­vat­ing an account on MySpace — as well as mak­ing it pretty thanks to Mike Davidson’s Hack­ing a More Taste­ful Myspace — I’ve recon­nected with peo­ple that I lost touch with 4 to 5 years ago and that alone is remark­able con­sid­er­ing I felt it’d be dif­fi­cult to do so otherwise.

The thought of con­tact­ing and recon­nect­ing with peo­ple from my past, the major­ity of them from high school, has always been in the back of my mind, but the con­ver­sa­tion starter, for exam­ple; “How I’d approach the per­son or begin the con­ver­sa­tion” always seemed a bit dif­fi­cult. Also, there never really seems like a good moment to do so and the notion that it might be awk­ward as such can make what would oth­er­wise seem appro­pri­ate and good willed turn into some­thing con­trived or put on.

Sad to say, but Myspace has allowed me to jump right in and test the waters. To show friends from my past that I really do care despite the lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For that, I can for­give the site for being a mess from a func­tion­al­ity stand­point and instead remained focused on sift­ing through the vast resource of indi­vid­u­als and egnited friend­ships from yesteryear. 

Teachers, Wii and Spore

May 18, 06 //
8

Here are a few ran­dom thoughts that I’ve had through­out this week, that on their own could poten­tially be expanded, but for the time being will remain in crys­tal­lized form:

Ele­men­tary Schools and Teachers

ChalkboardEver since I accepted a posi­tion work­ing as a cleaner (jan­i­tor, cus­to­dian, slop mop guy) at an ele­men­tary school I’ve gained a new per­spec­tive and greater appre­ci­a­tion in regards to every­thing that occurs behind the scenes.

Prior to work­ing at an ele­men­tary school, I had a very one-dimensional view of how schools actu­ally ran, see­ing as though my last encounter with a pee­wee edu­ca­tional fortress was many years ago.

Yet, when you pull back the cur­tain and real­ize that teach­ers have flaws, library shelves do in fact get dusty and there’s a bit­ter­sweet human ele­ment to it all that’s hard to describe, only then do you real­ize why schools con­tin­u­osly run themselves.

All of this boils down to the teach­ers them­selves, who in turn are modi­vated by their student’s achieve­ments, which fuels their inner pas­sion to edu­cate, look­ing past the spit­balls and dirty looks, know­ing full well at the other end there will be a result.

On that note, since we live in the era of Google, I was think­ing how much smarter a teacher can seem if he or she has access to a com­puter in their room. With Wikipedia and Google at their fin­ger­tips, said teacher can instan­ta­neously look up unlim­ited sub­ject mat­ter, print or project, and con­tribute end­less amounts of infor­ma­tion to the edu­ca­tion process.

It’s really fas­ci­nat­ing, con­sid­er­ing when I was younger all we had is an Apple II and maybe, depend­ing on if you were good or not, Ore­gon Trail with buf­falo shoot­ing action all at a gru­el­ing pace.

Wii!

For weeks on end I’ve been think­ing about Nintendo’s recently unvieled and renamed con­sole, Wii. I’ll admit that at first I was a bit taken back by the name (shocked even), see­ing as though the con­sole and it’s premise sounds kind of silly.

How­ever, after think­ing about it some I’ve grown to actu­ally love “Wii” and all it has to offer. Espe­cially after see­ing the slew of E3 demos that have popped up on sites like YouTube and Gamespot.

There’s just no deny­ing the fact that you’re no longer just play­ing, but par­tic­i­pat­ing in a game using their Wii-mote, which looks like your aver­age TV remote but rec­og­nizes 3D space and move­ment. How cool is that? Way cool!

Spore

With sites like Total Spore appear­ing out of thin air, there’s some­thing intrigu­ing and unde­ni­ably mouth water­ing about Will Wright’s newest sim cre­ation, Spore, that has the media and blo­gos­phere and maybe your neigh­bors in a gam­ing frenzy.

Spore isn’t just going to change the way peo­ple look at sim­u­la­tion games, it’s going to turn the gam­ing realm upside down. From the pre­views to demo footage and demon­stra­tions given by Wright him­self, it appears to be a mish mash of evo­lu­tion, cre­ation, old school gam­ing, clay mod­el­ing, strat­egy and sci-fi (amongst other things) all rolled into one.

I haven’t been this excited about a video game in years, not since I first laid eyes on Sim­c­ity and Populous. 

Acquisitions and Movies

April 15, 06 //
18

Update #3: (drum­roll) Arno is/was Andy “Malarkey” Clarke. What a crazy — but funny — bloke!

Update #2: Jeremy Keith responds to Arno after receiv­ing a sim­il­iar email, but for perfume.

Update: Arno responds to this post. (read below first if you haven’t already for the full scoop)

You know, I’ve sifted through a truck­load of emails in the past few years about instant credit reports, money-making oppor­tu­ni­ties and not to men­tion sales­peo­ple inter­ested in sell­ing me every­thing from pet rocks to laser-guided golf ball retreivers.

In all this time I’ve never once received a domain acqui­si­tion email, until today of course.

Not more than 8 hours ago, I received an email from an Arno Zim­mer­man in regards to pur­chas­ing, or actu­ally acquir­ing this domain for a “well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dio”. The email was a bit hazy, but to keep this on record for future con­ver­sa­tions I’m pre­sent­ing it here in it’s entirety.

Read on as I really can’t make this kind of stuff up:

Dear Mr Sagen,

My sin­cere apolo­gies for writ­ing to you unan­nounced. My name is Arno Zim­mer­man and I am CEO of an Inter­net domain name acqui­si­tions agency based here in Los Ange­les, California.

My agency is cur­rently engaged by a well-known Hol­ly­wood stu­dio. The stu­dio is pro­duc­ing a new action movie called The Kar­tooner. The movie has an all star cast, includ­ing Bruce Willis in the title role, and will be released in the fall. My client is there­fore very keen to pur­chase the rights to the domain name kartooner.com from you.

I am sure that you will under­stand that I can­not pro­vide you with much in the way of infor­ma­tion about our client at this time. How­ever I can assure you that they are sin­cere in their offer, and that they are keen to con­clude this pur­chase quickly.

I would be inter­ested to learn how much you would require for this trans­fer of ownership.

Many kind regards,

Arno Zim­mer­man

Okay, admit­tedly, you caught me off guard Mr. Zim­mer­man. If some­one were to tell me — like you just did — that Bruce Willis would be star­ring in an action movie called The Kar­tooner, I’d be hes­is­tant to believe such a thing.

How­ever, if you want to talk about the green­back, I might be will­ing to budge for about $66,000 dol­lars, give or take.

Let me know, alright? In the mean­time, I’m going to try and fig­ure out what I’d pur­chase with that kind of money.

Arno Responds

Dear Mr. Sagen,

My client’s legal team have informed me of your arti­cle regard­ing our offer to pur­chase your domain name. While I was a lit­tle sur­prised, as I have not yet had a reply from you directly, I do not think that this will cause us a prob­lem as The Kar­tooner is now in full pro­duc­tion, cur­rently shoot­ing live action in Manhattan.

As I men­tioned in my pre­vi­ous email, The Kar­tooner will star Bruce Willis in the title role. Bruce plays an impov­er­ished artist in New York who pays his bills by draw­ing car­toons for the New York Times. Through a series of unfor­tu­nate acci­dents, Bruce’s char­ac­ter mis­tak­enly becomes the tar­get of a Mafia hit squad and must use all his wits (as well as his artis­tic skills) to stay alive. Need­less to say I can­not divulge any fur­ther plot details.

You men­tioned in your arti­cle today that you would be pre­pared to accept a sum of $66,000. Unfor­tu­nately this is over the bud­get that my agency has been autho­rized to pay for the aqui­si­tion of your domain name. How­ever I won­der whether you would accept a smaller sum, in addi­tion to a small walk on part in the movie?

Would you please be so kind as to let us know your deci­sion as my clients are keen to con­clude this pur­chase quickly

Many kind regards,

Arno Zim­mer­man
CEO and Inter­net domain name acquisitions

 

The Cans

March 15, 06 //
3

Grow­ing up, I was never pre­vented (nor deprived) from watch­ing “clas­sic” Hol­ly­wood films, includ­ing those of the cult, hor­ror and Tech­ni­color vari­ety. They were always there, even if some weren’t major box office blowouts, because at least one per­son in my imme­di­ate and extended fam­ily had a VHS copy stashed somewhere.

Movies like The Blues Broth­ers, Ani­mal House and Fast Times at Ridge­mont High showed me how two bum­bling jazz mus­cians, a group of frat boys and premis­cu­ous teens could in the end — despite zany onscreen antics — come together and learn from their expe­ri­ences, despite con­flict and misunderstanding.

On the other end of the movie watch­ing spec­trum hor­ror films like Night­mare on Elm Street, Crit­ters, Ghoulies and Evil Dead II con­vinced me that scary movies could be funny, even if the creepy ghoul or slim-spewing mon­ster wasn’t exactly per­form­ing slapstick.

Then there was The Jerk (1979) with Steve Mar­tin (one of my Dad’s cher­ished movies), a movie that defined — at least to me at that par­tic­u­lar point in time — that a movie could be silly and knee-slapping funny and maybe a bit sentimental.

The movie begins with the fol­low­ing line:

Huh? I am not a bum. I’m a jerk. I once had wealth, power, and the love of a beau­ti­ful woman. Now I only have two things: my friends and… uh… my ther­mos. Huh? My story? Okay…

It’s hard to imag­ine any­thing worth watch­ing would begin like that, but if it stars Steve Mar­tin, there’s no sec­ond guess­ing really, it’s just going to work and not only that but it’ll be funny if not hilarious.

The Jerk tells the story of Navin John­son, born a “poor black child”, who’s actu­ally a very white man who hap­pened to be raised by a South­ern black fam­ily. In fact, the tagline of the film was “From rags to riches… to rags.” and that per­fectly explains the over­all story arch of this movie.

The truth of the mat­ter is Nathan, no mat­ter how hard he tries or thinks oth­er­wise, is not all there men­tally, in fact, he’s six plates short of a full course meal. Yet, this sim­ple minded man can be sym­pa­thized with because not only is naïve he’s also an endear­ing indi­vid­ual because of his innocense.

While The Jerk has plenty of hilar­i­ous sequences with our goofy pro­ta­gan­ist, there’s one scene in par­tic­u­lar that just busts me up even to this day. The scene, in which a sniper is try­ing to elim­i­nate Navin, is funny because every time Navin is shot at he’s near a group of cans of some sort and thinks the sniper is shoot­ing at the cans.

Mar­tin (as Navin) exclaims, “He hates the cans! Stay away from the cans!” as he ducks and dives to get away from them. It’s com­pletely nutty and yet fits within the con­text of the story. Why would Navin even con­sider that he’d be a tar­get? It would have to be cans and a man with a deep hatred for them.

This scene, among many, is one of the rea­sons The Jerk has reached cult clas­sic sta­tus and why it remains one of my favorite come­dies of all time, right up there with other clas­sic films that will always remain with me and influ­ence my own per­son­al­ity and out­look on life. 

Revisiting Jurassic Park

February 3, 06 //
13

Ask any­one who knows me about my fond­ness and utter boy­hood joy for movies and most likely you’ll begin to piece together per­sonal frag­ments that ulti­mately led to the per­son I am today.

Like Michael, I’m like a kid in a candy store — gnaw­ing on an enor­mous Gob­stop­per — when it comes to watch­ing movies, espe­cially those rare cin­e­matic expe­ri­ences where you feel as if you’re a part of what’s occur­ing on screen.

There are very few movies that have immersed me in such a vivid man­ner that when I’m amongst the audi­ence I for­get about real­ity until the cred­its appear on screen. One such movie, which debuted in the early 90s, totally cap­ti­vated me at the time as well as reminded me what a good movie could be.

Sev­eral months prior to the offi­cial open­ing of the movie I can remem­ber strolling past the card­board dis­play, a medium-sized adver­tise­ment with a jeep and the words “Juras­sic Park: An Adven­ture 65 Mil­lion Years in the Making”.

At the time, my brother and I stopped dead in our tracks and just exam­ined the adver­tise­ment won­der­ing to our­selves whether or not it was a dinosaur movie or a cheesy hor­ror flick. Despite our attempts to fig­ure out what the movie was about, I do remem­ber think­ing that the logo was fan­tas­tic, a silo­huette of a dinosaur on a blood red back­ground with huge bold let­ters, that alone guar­an­teed our pres­cence at the film’s release.

How­ever, there was one tiny detail I had ini­tially over­looked upon first glanc­ing at the card­board stand, that Juras­sic Park was not only going to be a movie about dinosaurs, but that Steven Spiel­berg was direct­ing. I decided then and there, with­out a moment’s hes­i­ta­tion, that I was going to see this movie, no mat­ter what.

After doing some more research on the film, which if I remem­ber cor­rectly, con­sisted of watch­ing every enter­tain­ment medium that I could, it was revealed that not only was this going to be a movie about dinosaurs, it was going to be about a “dinosaur amuse­ment park”. In my opin­ion, mix­ing giant rep­tiles of the past with Dis­ney­land seemed like a superb idea.

Hav­ing no prior knowl­edge of the book I decided to pur­chase it and read it before the movie, some­thing I try to avoid since they rarely ever com­pli­ment eachother. A few chap­ters into Juras­sic Park my eyes glazed over and I tossed the book aside in dis­be­lief and frankly dis­ap­point­ment, mainly because of the long pas­sages of text deal­ing strictly with med­ical ter­mi­nol­ogy and the fact that the story itself dragged on.

Luck­ily, Steven Spiel­berg and crew took cre­ative lib­er­ties with the story, some­thing I was happy with con­sid­er­ing the orig­i­nal sto­ry­line, while sim­i­lar and I sup­pose appeal­ing to some read­ers, wasn’t exactly “adven­ture” mate­r­ial (years later I would end up chang­ing my mind, after read­ing the book cover-to-cover).

The movie Juras­sic Park, unlike it’s book coun­ter­part, was sim­ply one of the most ener­getic and visu­ally mind-blowing cin­e­matic expe­ri­ences since Star Wars. The break­through CGI, bring­ing to life dinosaurs you could only imag­ine before­hand, made these dinosaurs seem life­like and in some instances down­right hor­rific, espe­cially the T-Rex and Raptors.

Almost 13 years later, I’ve since revis­ited Juras­sic Park, hav­ing watched the DVD and air­ings of the movie on tele­vi­sion and I’m still cap­ti­vated by it. The per­for­mances are and char­ac­ters them­selves are stel­lar, espe­cially that of Ian Mal­colm as played by Jeff “The Fly” Gold­blum. He plays the neu­rotic, know-it-all char­ac­ter in many films and pulls it off par­tic­u­larly well in JP. The spe­cial effects, which were pin­na­cle at the time, still remain con­vinc­ing and dramatic.

Juras­sic Park is and was truly one of the most ful­fill­ing movie expe­ri­ences that I’ve ever wit­nessed and because of the amount of detail and the thrilling aspects to the film it’ll always remain a clas­sic, earn­ing its spot next to other won­der­ful movies that will be watched and remem­bered by gen­er­a­tions to come, mark my word. 

Another 80’s Movie

January 17, 06 //
7

There’s been some­thing on my mind lately and it now feels like a good time to finally reveal that to you, with­out feel­ing com­pletely embarassed. There’s noth­ing quite like a nag­ging thought, jump­ing up and down in your mind like that ener­getic class­mate who real­ized the answer just before you did, remem­ber that kid? Fran­ti­cally wav­ing his hand, while try­ing to main­tain a sense of men­tal sta­bil­ity, yeah, that’s how I feel right now so let me just spill it.

We need another 80’s movie.

I know, you’re prob­a­bly think­ing to your­self right now that I’ve com­pletely lost it. After sev­eral weeks of silence, my mind has come to a screech­ing halt and I’ve crashed landed in Crazy-go-nutsville, Pop­u­la­tion: Me.

It’s pos­si­ble that I might’ve agreed with you prior to my writ­ing this, but at the moment I’ve con­vinced myself that this might save Hol­ly­wood from the mediocre scripts that are some­how green­lighted before some­one real­izes that Wil Fer­rel and Ash­ton Kutcher have not only jumped the shark but they are now flee­ing said shark in a fran­tic craze.

Let me break this down into a few thoughts wherein I hope to redeem my reveal­ing this absolutely insane suggestion.

Fea­tures of a Typ­i­cal 80’s Movie

Think back to films like ‘Six­teen Can­dles’, ‘The Goonies’, ‘Back to the Future’, ‘E.T.’, ‘Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off’ and flops like ‘Wil­low’, ‘Howard the Duck’ and those Ewok movies. What did these all have in com­mon, despite awful hair styles, awk­ward act­ing and pseudo-electronic music?

All of the films men­tioned above ulti­mately have that “feel good”, slow-clapping emo­tion that’s hard to repli­cate in mod­ern films of the early-to-mid 90’s and now the 2000’s. I’m sure you’ve seen some extra­or­di­nary films in your life­time which com­pletely changed your per­spec­tive and out­look about the enter­tain­ment indus­try, but why is it that even today we can’t help but quote 80’s films in every­day conversation?

Lost Sin­cer­ity

Do we need to thank the writ­ers of 80’s movies for breath­ing life, albeit sappy life, into the films which we remem­ber? Or, is there some­thing else at work here?

I’ve often thought about the impact 80’s films have had on my life and why I’m con­stantly reflect­ing to an era that many peo­ple are glad is over, but there was a sin­cer­ity that’s miss­ing in recent films and we need that back in order to close the book on a chap­ter of film that never felt resolved.

End of an Era

To me it just kind of abruptly ended with movies like ‘Bat­ter­ies Not Included’, ‘Who Framed Roger Rab­bit’ and ‘UHF’ and to this day I half-expected some­one like Billy Barty or Weird Al to hit a enor­mous golden gong dur­ing a live telethon to mark the end of 80’s enter­tain­ment (Farewell to the 80’s: Celebs on Call) and announce to the world that the cur­tain would be lifted and the spot­light would be shone on films of the new era; the 1990’s.

There was never such an occas­sion. Never a slow clap that would grad­u­ally increase into a full applause with a freeze-framed end­ing cou­pled with the awk­ward laugh that would tran­si­tion to a quick thumbs up from the jock or beauty queen who learned to accept those who were different.

Never once did I hear the likes of Depeche Mode, ZZTop, Ste­vie Ray Vaughan or Oingo Boingo fad­ing slowly away in the back­ground as the lights dimmed and the cur­tains fell mark­ing the end of an era.

Instead, we were lin­ing up for Dances with Wolves and yet another Pauly Shore movie, look­ing for­ward with the movie-going blind­sights on and for­get­ting why 80’s movies were so endear­ing, sen­si­tive, funny, sappy and sin­cere in that “feel good”, slow-clapping kind of way.

We need another 80’s movie. 

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