I had a number of problems with Steve Carell’s final episode on The Office, “Goodbye, Michael”. There was the comedy void that is Will Ferrell’s guest starring role and everything revolving around that character. There’s also the lesser problem of the logistics behind Pam getting through security to say goodbye to Michael in the airport. That was a bit too much artistic license for me to embrace in 2011, but that’s minor. Still, I found myself more deeply troubled by that scene and I believe I’ve pinned it down to the characterization of Pam over the last couple seasons.

There was a time on The Office when Pam had some ambition. Initially this was in the form of her artistic pursuits, and Michael Scott was one of her big supporters here. When Pam had her first art show, Michael was the one to genuinely praise her work and give her a boost. Jim would of course also support her dreams, but Michael’s was more pure without the romantic angle coming into play. Pam’s artistic talents would pop up here and there, and overall she seemed to actually want to better herself. Eventually she would give art school a valiant shot only to come up short. No matter, she’ll soon be given the opportunity to try new things as a founding member of the Michael Scott Paper Company, where she found some small success in sales. After that short-lived side adventure, Michael would go to bat in order to bring Pam back to Dunder Mifflin as a full-fledged salesperson. This lasted for about a season until the writers figured out that having so many main characters have the same job didn’t lend itself to much story variety, so Pam determines that she’s largely failed at sales. She had apparently been making minimal commissions during this time and wanted more money. Side question: are we to assume she was a worse salesperson than Andy, who is consistently written as the most incompetent of the bunch?

Anyway, Pam needed a new job that keeps her in the office but she was all out of genuine ambition. She fabricated a bullshit job as the office administrator, which the office had gotten by without for years, and conned Gabe and other department heads into signing off on it, even to the point of giving her unearned wages. With that, she effectively returned to doing what she did as a secretary, minus answering the phone. She plans office games, procures odd pieces of equipment for the office, and negotiates new lease terms with the office park. But mostly, she finagled herself a job that the office never required before, all during a financial crisis to boot. Somehow she maintains a job that pays more and contributes less to the company. “Goodbye, Michael” features Pam supposedly going on a run to price out paper shredders, and perhaps she did indeed do that although I’m not sure why anyone has to leave their computer and phone to do that in this day and age. But the only thing the audience sees her do is skip work and go see The King’s Speech. Side note: at least she turns her phone off while in a movie theater. Seriously however, this might just be the last straw I have with her character. She’s not only settled into a farce of a job and zero interest in bettering her life in any way, but she’s also actively not contributing to her company. Granted, the employees of Dunder Mifflin waste a lot of time while on the clock, but it’s usually standard office environment distractions or under Michael’s misguided direction. Pam checking out and seeing a movie while claiming to be working is way too egregious for me. This is far, far from the Pam we fell in love with during the early seasons.

All this brings me back to the end of Steve Carell’s exit from the show. I wish Pam didn’t get to say goodbye to Michael. I don’t think she deserved it. Her con over her colleagues would finally not work out for her. She wouldn’t get to express her gratitude for a boss who gave her so many breaks and so much support that she ultimately squandered. What if she had missed this opportunity to say goodbye? It could serve as a wakeup call for how she’s wasting her life, wallowing in a meaningless and entirely expendable job without dreams of any kind. It might even motivate an actual story arc for the character. It can’t be worse than having her do the next-to-nothing that has occupied her time for the last year or so. Not having that goodbye would be sad from Michael’s perspective, and perhaps that’s not at all what this show – now or even in its early years – would do, but I think it would have been significantly more interesting. I just think the Pam and Michael relationship has lost its meaning in recent seasons and that wasn’t reflected here. Quite frankly, I’m not sure I buy that the current version of Pam truly appreciates who Michael Scott was to her. She’s affectionately supported him in his troubles with Holly, but I’m not sure that’s enough. I think Pam deserved to miss out on that sweet goodbye. She was asking for it with her downward spiral of indifference and apathy. Maybe that’s what she needed in order to remember his unconditional belief in her talent and potential. Maybe that would have lit something within herself, because the desires she once had have long since burned out.

So, in a general sense I love the setting and atmosphere of the show. I love stories that let us see passionate people at their jobs, and while Rubicon hasn’t gotten too involved in any specific assignment given to Will and his team, we do get Will obsessing over the crosswords pattern and what it might have to do with David’s death. We also get a glimpse at another analyst, Miles, and his inability to deal with the apparent ignoring of work he did foreseeing bloody conflict in Nigeria. Prior to the series opening, we get the sense that Will enjoyed the puzzles and patterns for their own sake, as a challenge and a distraction from his grieving over his late wife and child, but then a pattern emerges that affects his mentor and father-in-law. Suddenly the work means something. Meanwhile, Miles is too obsessed with the aftermath and results of his work to function properly on current assignments. He actually cares about the analysis he’s doing. The fairly abstract problem solving at the heart of the job proves compelling when the characters (and performances) are so passionate and involved in it.

On top of the crosswords puzzle, Will sees indications that he’s being followed after his first day on the job. As an audience, we know he’s being followed and watched so his paranoia and caution is completely justified for us. We also know that there is some sort of conspiratorial group of men with some sort of controlling agenda. We also see that the analysts have limited control over what data they receive for their assignments and again, what their analysis is or is not used for. As the personalized note on David’s chessboard said, these people are pawns. They’re small players in the grand scheme of things. Important perhaps, but also expendable and replaceable (as we see in David’s apparent death and even Tom’s). I’m extrapolating a bit, but we see that David has a host of superstitions that he acknowledges are silly but he still obeys them fully. This is David finding a way of exerting a sense of control over his life. The second episode provides a glimpse that Will might unconsciously see value in the same path, gripping the rabbit’s foot while being tailed through the streets and demanding that David’s broom (purchased to help avoid a curse) is returned to the office. A key theme of the show, it would seem, is the stifling and dehumanizing nature of an analyst’s job. They live secret lives far away from the levels of government with actionable power. Their purpose is to solve puzzles, find patterns, analyze the data and pass the conclusions on up the hierarchy. What happens before and after that, and even during to a certain extent, is beyond their control. Miles sees that sometimes this is all a fruitless exercise with the Nigeria situation, but cannot unconcern himself with it. Tanya takes to drinking after just two weeks on the job. Ed Bancroft’s mind was allegedly broken by the work. David took to controlling minute elements of his life through superstitious beliefs. Will has taken to a potentially dangerous investment in the crosswords puzzle and perhaps to a little superstition himself. What are these people doing to themselves, and for what?

At this point I have to highlight a recurring visual motif that I particularly appreciate. A couple times we see individuals dwarfed by highly geometric pieces of architecture. When Will first leaves the office before finding himself being followed, he walks passed a large building front with cross-cutting steel beams. The shots are composed with Will as a smaller figure at the bottom of the frame with the large metal pattern everywhere above him. At the end of the episode, even the men spying on Will are shown to be tiny figures compared to the large repeating window panes hiding the empty floor in which they’ve set up their stakeout. We get the sense that the conspiracy is vast and pervasive and pawns can be found on every side. To get ahead of the game, these pieces of architecture could also withstand the removal of one its elements without catastrophe. The same seems to be the case for the conspiracy.

That’s all a preface to my reaction to Iron Man 2, a movie which completely abandons all possibility of actually engaging with this character. Rather, Tony Stark and Robert Downey Jr. are simply unleashed without direction. There is no character arc here, not even a feigned one as in the first film. Stark, in all his self-absorption and narcissism, has become an even bigger dick in the six months since we last saw him. He’s fully embraced his role as a human weapon, arguing that he and the suit are one. Gone is even a minuscule amount of care about his business, of which he quickly hands away control. The first film at least had him say once or twice that he wanted his company to shift away from weapons to energy sources, but it’s not clear that that’s happened. Tony Stark has restarted his father’s Stark Expo – basically a World’s Fair – but the only tech we see shown off there are weaponized suits and robots. It’s more like a Tony Stark/Iron Man fan convention than an event meant to inspire and give back to the people.

Anyway, it’s not clear what Stark Enterprises is doing as business anymore, but we can be sure that it has not made any effort to mass produce the arc reactor technology to help solve the world’s energy problems. In fact, based upon the movie’s senate committee sequence and Ivan Vanko’s need to build his own arc reactor, it would seem Stark has no plans to let the technology into the hands of anyone else, neither the government nor the public. Tony is eventually forced to revisit the arc reactor tech, but only for his own health purposes. As he’s facing death, which never feels very credible, there’s some lip service about legacy and finals moments, but it culminates in some goofy shenanigans as he gets drunk and acts like dangerous asshole for what he’s calling his potentially last birthday. You’d think with the pieces in play – Tony facing his own mortality and the story returning to elements of his father’s career and legacy – that a decent story involving Tony struggling with defining a positive role for himself in the world would write itself, but instead the entire plot is even more insular than in the last one.

There’s a glimmer of hope for the movie when Stark visits Vanko in prison. The latter accuses the Stark family of being thieves and murderers, and I find myself hoping we’re going to actually delve into that legacy this time around. Unfortunately, just as quickly as Mickey Rourke’s line reading is done, so is the film’s interest in that topic. Stark doesn’t genuinely engage with his or his family’s demons, let alone conquer them. The script just trots them out once in a while, “look over here, doesn’t this element kinda give Tony Stark some depth? Now back to CGI robots clanging around the screen and glib quips by Downey Jr.” The problem with occasionally reminding us that there are interesting possibilities in Stark’s story is that it makes what we get all the more unsatisfying.

Vanko also opens up the possibility of the movie dealing with Stark’s reaction to inspiring copycats, including those who would use similar technology for evil purposes. This, like the rest of the film’s thematic opportunities, is avoided completely. There’s not even an acknowledgment that he’s in any way responsible for any part of what Vanko and Sam Rockwell’s Justin Hammer do in creating their own villainous machines. Stark never once even comments on the plot against him. There’s no “escalation” moment like in the finale of Batman Begins. Hell, for some inexplicable reason Congress gives Stark an award at the film’s end, even though the film’s plot proves the points senators made earlier. Suffice to say, some things in Iron Man 2 don’t even make sense on their own superficial plane of existence, let alone a deeper one. The movie simply refuses to break through the surface, instead it’s content with being a brainless popcorn flick. All flash, no bang.

I don’t believe I have read a single comic that Iron Man appears in, but it’s not very difficult to see that the character has dramatic potential. The first act of Iron Man did a fine job of revealing several intriguing opportunities with its lead character. It’s just a shame the people responsible for producing these films couldn’t care less.

I’d like to post a list of the notable directors, actors, etc. who have signed a petition declaring the whole scandal a mere “case of morals” and the intrusion of justice into a film festival “inadmissible”. Among the names on the list are: Pedro Almodovar, Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, Monica Belluci, Alfonso Cuaron, Alexandre Desplat, Jonathan Demme, Stephen Frears, Costa, Gavras, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Neil Jordan, Wong Kar Wai, John Landis, David Lynch, Michael Mann, Sam Mendes, Mike Nichols, Alexander Payne, Walter Salles, Julian Schnabel, Martin Scorsese, Steven Soderbergh, Tilda Swinton, . Oh, and Woody Allen, but you already guessed that. All of these people put their name below a letter that questioned whether what Polanski did was even wrong in the first place, but then have the nerve to position film festivals as sacred ground.

Are these filmmakers simply callous, self-important assholes who believe the creation of art trumps criminal behavior? That the rich and famous shouldn’t have to face justice for ‘indiscretions’ or ‘tiny mistakes’? Do they believe middle aged men having sex with thirteen year old girls isn’t immoral? Do they believe rape isn’t immoral? Or are they ignorant of the facts of the case? Are they afraid not to support him? Have they obtained their views on the situation from the heavily slanted Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired documentary, a work that the Los Angeles County Superior Court contends with on facts, let alone less explicit assertions? A work that, like some recent columnists, spends far too much time talking about Polanski’s tragic past and the judge’s personal life instead of analyzing what Polanski was charged with, accused of and plead guilty to. Truth is, the positions of these filmmakers won’t impact my appreciation for what they’ve produced, just as Roman Polanski’s disgusting personal life doesn’t turn Chinatown into a terrible film. However, for argument’s sake, it’s fun to throw their own argument back in their face. If they want to link their personal beliefs and actions to their films, as they’re doing by even talking about his works in this context or touting the magical sanctity of film as reason not to pursue Polanski, then it’d be fair game to do for them too, right? Only unlike the film industry, fewer members of the public would look upon defending Polanski in a positive light. It would be amusing to see what happens when audiences connect Shutter Island to Scorsese’s stance that this is a “case of morals”. Somehow I doubt if they would appreciate the argument when it has potentially negative repercussions for themselves and their industry.

As if I needed any more reason to hate Harvey Weinstein, he’s written an op-ed piece for The Independent about the Polanski arrest. Much of it is – unsurprisingly – back door compliments to himself (did you know he’s produced Oscar nominated films or that he can call up Governor Schwarzenneger whenever he wants? It’s true!, but he also reveals a very seriously twisted perspective on the birth of the scandal. Notably, he references the “so-called crime.” Wait, what? So now there’s a debate over whether sex with a 13 year-old was illegal? If so, someone should go back in time and tell Roman Polanski before he admitted guilt to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor (a kind legalese way of saying statutory way). There can be no question that that was a crime. Even Polanski didn’t fight that one, but I guess it is rather hard to stand by Polanski when he’s got that pesky crime in his file. Diminishing its meaning or outright denying it is certainly one tactic to overcoming its weight.

Weinstein, like every Polanski defender, also manages to drop a few wacky distractions, like the conspiracy theory that the Swiss would only arrest Polanski because they’re seeking American help regarding their financial crisis. Yeah, that’s relevant. With or without the financial crisis, Polanski is still wanted by the United States and Switzerland still has an extradition treaty with them. Or how about this fun nugget:

It is a shocking way to treat such a man. Polanski went through the Holocaust and the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, by the Manson family. How do you go from the Holocaust to the Manson family with any sort of dignity? In those circumstances, most people could not contribute to art and make the kind of beautiful movies he continues to make.

I didn’t know Holocaust survivors and widowers got Get Out of Jail Free cards. And think of the art he’s made! Oh that beautiful, beautiful art! Surely that’s worth more than the “so-called crime” against this young girl, right?

I was involved by the film, and it was an amazing experience to see people weep at the end of it. Warren Beatty and Robert Evans were there, too, and you could feel the sense of injustice from these people who are part of Polanski’s life. They know that, at heart, he is a humanist.

Ah, the oft-touted ‘he’s too nice to be a rapist’ claim. Just like those people who never guessed that their quiet, unassuming neighbor was a serial killer.

Forget about the Seventies era and whether this is excusable – this is a miscarriage of justice, and the government is making him a scapegoat.

A scapegoat? For what? Weinstein never says, probably because there can be no possible rational answer. After all, Polanski pleaded guilty to a crime. If Polanski can only be a scapegoat for himself.

Weinstein also brings up the aforementioned documentary’s claim that the judge reneged on the plea bargain’s agreements. He also simultaneously claims that Polanski already did his time. Both of these are half-truths at best. It’s true, Polanski’s plea bargain involved him spending 90 days under evaluation (he ultimately did less than half of that) but that was for the purpose of informing the subsequent sentencing. Let’s say that again, the sentencing had not been completed. When Polanski began to believe he wouldn’t be sentenced leniently, he fled the nation. Now, it’s true that at this time the judge acted unethically in engaging in ex parte communication with a lawyer for the state of California, albeit one in no way involved in the Polanski case. We’re still left with Polanski fleeing the country… before sentencing. So any claim that he’s completed his sentencing is straight-up bullshit.

I’ll leave off with two recommended readings. The first is “Letters From Hollywood: Roman Polanski’s Rape Of Child No Big Thing” by Kate Harding. In particular, check out her reactions to Debra Winger, president of the Zurich Film Festival jury, who is going around claiming Polanski’s arrest is an attack on art. Second, “Whitewashing Roman Polanski” over at Salon from February, about the now infamous documentary and it’s many perverse biases.

P.S. Props to French powerhouse writer/director/producer Luc Besson for standing up and essentially saying that Polanski is not above the law, that “there is one justice, and that should be the same for everyone.” No matter what he thinks about Polanski (Besson says he has no opinion but he knows him and their daughters are friends), at least he understands that the rich, powerful and artistic shouldn’t be allowed to operate under a different set of rules.

Look, I don’t know or care what the legal status of his case is at this time. My limited knowledge of the situation tells me there is a genuine discussion to be had about whether his case was properly handled, whether it’s open or closed, etc. But then you get idiots who can’t approach the issue with any nuance and argue that he was wronged long before anything even went before a judge.

The Huffington Post’s entertainment page is currently featuring two editorials by people spinning fact into amazing fiction in order to turn Polanski into not just an innocent man, but a victim even. First up is Joan Z. Shore’s “Polanski’s Arrest: Shame on the Swiss”. She begins with a whole lot of irrelevant nonsense about the Swiss being purportedly neutral in international affairs and talking about how this arrest has put the nation on her shit list. Then comes the disgusting stuff.

But there is more to this story. The 13-year old model “seduced” by Polanski had been thrust onto him by her mother, who wanted her in the movies. The girl was just a few weeks short of her 14th birthday, which was the age of consent in California. (It’s probably 13 by now!) Polanski was demonized by the press, convicted, and managed to flee, fearing a heavy sentence.

Where to even start with this victim-blaming filth? It was all the girl and mother’s faults. They made the girl readily available to him! And who cares about the age of consent, either then or now? It’s not in question since he eventually issues a guilty plea to unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor. That says it all on that issue. Poor Polanski, being demonized for drugging and raping a girl a third of his age. Boo hoo.

I met Polanski shortly after he fled America and was filming Tess in Normandy. I was working in the CBS News bureau in Paris, and I accompanied Mike Wallace for a Sixty Minutes interview with Polanski on the set. Mike thought he would be meeting the devil incarnate, but was utterly charmed by Roman’s sobriety and intelligence.

So what? No part of his being smart makes rape an impossibility.

On to another twisted method of excusing Polanski’s actions with John Farr’s “Leniency for Polanski”.

Confronting these developments, we must affirm the law’s the law, right? And what Polanski reputedly did with a 13-year-old girl all those years ago was unquestionably the act of a sick individual.

I sense a big “but” coming…

But the story of what Polanski suffered even before the unspeakable trauma of having his pregnant wife Sharon Tate butchered in the spooky twilight of the turbulent Sixties makes me believe that overall, he’s as much victim as predator himself.

Can you imagine living in the Krakow ghetto during the Nazi Occupation, and at the tender age of ten watching both your parents shuttled off to concentration camps, only to have your mother die in one?

These horrors by no means excuse his crime, but they are mitigating factors, are they not?

Uh, no?! Sorry but being a child during the Holocaust or having your wife killed by a cult of crazies doesn’t have shit to do with raping a thirteen year old. Or as Farr puts it, the time he “seduced” a thirteen year old with champagne and Quaaludes.

This new arrest also smacks of a sneak attack on the now 76-year-old director, who’s been remarried to actress Emmanuelle Seigner for two decades. (He’s probably reformed by now, don’t you think?)

I don’t know, he could be reformed, but maybe those childhood memories will return and he’ll abuse his position as an adult again. [/snark] Either way, reforming yourself on your own is not an option in the view of a proper justice system.

Possibly the worst part of this editorial, which I won’t quote, involves Farr giving a rundown on his five favorite Polanski films, as if the sum of these artistic achievements should be weighed against his indiscretions. This isn’t an either or situation. It doesn’t matter how awesome his films are, his crimes are still crimes. There is no intersection between these aspects of his life and to insinuate anything else is just gross and irresponsible. A series of other filmmakers are protesting his arrest and possible extradition as well, and Harvey Weinstein has pledged support. What a lovely world where artists take their craft more seriously than rape.

I’ll return one last time to Joan Z. Shore, who made some additional remarks in the comments section of the article.

One fact in the Polanski case has been overlooked (which is in the girl’s testimony before the judge): she was not a virgin.

Because as we all know, you can’t be raped if you’re not a virgin.

This latest event in Roman Polanski’s decision to run from the law is bigger than himself. It’s a time to look at some of the disgusting beliefs and points of view about sex and rape that lies beneath the surface of this nation’s consciousness. The hopeful, optimistic side of me wants this to become an opportunity for younger generations to be educated about what rape is really about, what it means and how justifying it hurts us all. Anything, anything at all to move the country a little bit further away from so often blaming the victim or excusing the rapist. There will never be justification for either.

Roger Ebert:

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys.

Manohla Dargis:

And make no mistake: Mr. Bay is an auteur. His signature adorns every image in his movies, as conspicuously as that of Lars von Trier, and every single one is inscribed with a specific worldview and moral sensibility. Mr. Bay’s subject — overwhelming violent conquest — is as blatant and consistent as his cluttered mise-en-scène. His images, particularly during the frequent action sequences, can be difficult to visually track, but they are also consistently disjointed. (And proudly self-referential: the only director he overtly cites is himself, with a shot of the poster for his movie “Bad Boys II.”) The French filmmaker Jacques Rivette once described an auteur as someone who speaks in the first person. Mr. Bay prefers to shout.

Peter Bradshaw:

Bay has a great love of flashy effects, stroboscopic editing and loud crashes; he famously calls his cinematic technique “fucking the frame”. That phrase might be brutal, but it’s accurate. And there’s no doubt about it: he really has given the frame a right old seeing-to this time. Bay has turned up at the frame’s flat with some unguent massage oils, scented candles and a hundredweight of Viagra. It isn’t long before the headboard of the frame’s bed is crashing repeatedly against the wall, while the frame gazes up at the ceiling … and I think the frame is faking it.

Devin Faraci:

And we hadn’t even gotten to the point where it became obvious that no one involved in the film cared enough to craft even the most rudimentary of stories or to be concerned about even the most simple of continuity: at one point the characters walk out of the back door of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington DC and end up blatantly in Arizona at the Sorona Desert Airplane Graveyard. It’s a breathtaking moment of not giving a shit, one that gives you an idea of how little thought and care went into the construction of the film.

Some of these elements are downright inconsequential to the telling of the story. I have no idea why this film required a ghost. The real story isn’t about the ghost, even though that’s largely what the first half of the film focuses on. Rather, the story is about Jacinto’s greed and its impact on the orphanage. He’s trying to get into the orphanage’s safe where he believes Republican gold is stashed and that this will allow him to become his own man. Kept secret for a little more than half the film, it’s Jacinto who killed the missing orphan Santi in an act of violence that goes further than intended, all because Santi saw Jacinto attempting to get into the safe. All of the plot’s momentum will come from this goal. He disposes of the body and the haunting begins, but ghost Santi only ever approaches the other orphans. As with most ghost stories, Santi spends way too much time scaring the hell out of his potential allies rather than demonstrating that he comes in peace and seeks help.

Long story short, by the time the audience and most of the children learn that Jacinto isn’t just a bit of a dick but also a greedy murderer he’s already attacked the orphanage caretakers and blown up the room with the safe. Revenge for their friend’s death is no longer a primary concern, now it’s just to survive this madman who eventually disposes of all the adults and locks the children up. In what could be a great climax where these children escape and kill Jacinto all on their own, a new ghost (of a just killed caretaker) enters the picture to briefly help them. Not only is this fairly random and disappointing, but it’s only necessary in the plot because one child rolls his ankle dropping out of a window on his way to freeing the others. Why not just let the kids succeed on their own? And why not just use Santi to open their door instead of introducing a second ghost? For all the setup, Santi doesn’t even figure into the climax except for Jacinto being killed in such a way as to see Santi’s body in his last moments.

For all of the tangents and set dressing, The Devil’s Backbone is just about a greedy man abusing an orphanage. The ghost story, the religious symbology, the Spanish Civil War backdrop, the specific recurring imagery of the undetonated bomb, the sexual intrigue between some of the adults, etc., none of it really informs that main story. Writer/director Guillermo del Toro desperately needed to decide whether he wanted to explore the supernatural elements of this world, which populate the film’s first half, or the story of human survival, which takes up the second half. As it is, you’ve got one story with no end and another with an underdeveloped beginning.

There’s a nice little scene where the head caretaker, Dr. Casares, tells Carlos the superstition about a rum that ages in bottles with human fetuses with “devil’s backbones”. As will forever be the case, floating fetuses in jars will always be disturbing and creepy (see Carnivàle and Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom). The superstition involves these unborn babies, with their visible spines, never having meant to be born, but if you drink rum infused with their spirit, it can cure your ailments. Maybe this can be stretched into a metaphor wherein facing Santi’s ghost helps Carlos face up to Jacinto, but it’s tenuous at best, as are most of the links between Jacinto’s story and the film’s supernatural elements.

The Devil’s Backbone feels like a brainstorming session that didn’t get fleshed out. Del Toro throws ideas and images against the wall and hopes they’ll not only stick but form something cohesive. I’m left wanting a film that either embraces the supernatural motifs or excises them in favor of the reality-based drama. Unfortuantely, it’s an awkward hybrid that I viewed.

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Eagle Eye

Before I begin, let me identify the major elements of Eagle Eye here. Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) has just returned from his twin brother’s funeral to find a large sum of money in his bank account and his apartment full of weapons and fertilizer. He receives a mysterious phone call warning him to leave. The FBI immediately seizes him. Elsewhere, Rachel Holloman (Michelle Monaghan) sends her son on a train to Washington DC where he is to perform with classmates at the Lincoln Center. She soon receives a phone call detailing a threat to her son unless she does as commands. Soon enough both characters are teamed up and compelled to do what the mystery caller requests or face ruin. The caller turns out to be Aria, a computerized persona of the Eagle Eye system, which is an operation being carried out in the 36th floor of the Pentagon designed to catalogue and sort virtually all information available through government records, consumer histories and all manner of surveillance. For some reason it also gives recommendations on counter-terrorism operations, and in the pre-title segment one such recommendation is ignored leading to an American bombing of a funeral procession in the Middle East that some false intel had possibly identified as involving wanted terrorists. As a result of this wrongful attack and the ensuing anti-American protests and attacks in the Middle East, Aria goes rogue and decides to eliminate the president and nearly everyone in the chain of succession in order to protect the nation from further bad decisions and consequently further anti-American action. That’s where Jerry and Rachel come into play. Get it? Now then…

This is a film with a plot so easy to destroy that it’s not even fun to do so. The holes are massive and staggeringly frequent. Perhaps the most egregious ones, if only because it happens so often, involve the Pentagon’s supercomputer hacking things that have nothing to do with the Internet in order to aid the mission of the two lead characters. Really, those junkyard cranes in Chicago were connected to a network accessible from Washington DC? The Eagle Eye system can pretty much control anything with a microchip, except of course for when it’s convenient for the screenplay to make the system fail or overlook something. Everything from the television sets in a Circuit City to uh, power lines. But these are all problems with the plotting, although they are so pervasive as to be seriously problematic. Plot holes can be overlooked if the story being told and its themes are strong enough.

Unfortunately for Eagle Eye this is not the case. The film simply does not know what it wants to be about. Throughout the film we see POV shots through surveillance cameras and hear scary news reports about domestic spying, which would be discomforting if it had anything to do with the Eagle Eye plot. Heck, Aria even tells our heroes about how it’s accumulated all kinds of personal information, purchasing patterns, etc. about these two, but none of that data is used in their selection to aid its evil purpose. Rather, Jerry is picked because it requires a voicematch for his deceased twin, and Rachel is chosen because her son can be arranged to play a musical instrument near the president and cabinet. Their identities are not difficult to determine, and don’t at all require combing through their lives. The domestic spying angle – and it does indeed have disturbing ramifications in real life – is used here as window dressing to make the actual story seem timely. In truth Eagle Eye is another Frankenstein’s monster tale where a technological creation disobeys its master and runs amok.

Regrettably, the movie kinda fails in this regard as well, since Aria was apparently given powers that are only used once it goes rogue. When we see the military using it as intended, and as expository dialogue explains its purpose, the system is only meant to collect and sort data and aid humans in analyzing it. All the actions we see are made by humans and don’t involve Eagle Eye’s use at all. It’s completely separated from the attack that indirectly sets off the plot. Once that happens though, the Aria and the Eagle Eye have the capability to digitally reach out into the world and command electronics, make phone calls, etc. Why would a data collection system even be given the capability to do these things? It’s like the engineers were asking for their monster to go berserk. And why, in an influence from Asimov’s I, Robot, does Aria have a hardwired respect for the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution? As we’re told, it’s not designed to control the government. It collects data, analyzes it, makes recommendations and recognizes threats. It’s stated design has nothing to do with taking action based on any of that. But suddenly it wants to overthrow the government because Aria has deemed the government to fall under the reasons the Founding Fathers used in justifying a violent break from Britain by citing from the following:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The anti-American actions following the wrongful bombing proves to Aria that the government needs to be dismantled. That it never considers how detonating a bomb near the president during his State of the Union address might cause more American deaths than protests and violent reactions in the Middle East is baffling. Aria should have read one line further into the Declaration to see that “prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” In the grand scheme of things, I don’t see a single wrongful bombing and its aftermath as necessitating the government’s abolition. If only Aria had taken offense at the Declaration’s line “for imposing Taxes on us without our Consent” and punished politicians for not giving Washington DC a voting presence in Congress. That would have made up for every one of the film’s problems through sheer hilarity.

So ultimately the Frankenstein’s monster and I, Robot angles prove disappointing since Aria was apparently designed by college dropouts. Humanity was just asking for it in the way Aria could do virtually anything it wanted without legitimate reason or for being given a hardwired devotion to the Declaration of Independence. Who thought any of that was a good idea, or even relevant to data collection and analysis? Neither does this say anything of real value about the dangers of domestic spying. A machine with that kind of programming wouldn’t require any kind of surveillance at all to be of great danger to the nation. I guess the movie is a warning against hiring incompetent engineers for top-secret Pentagon projects.

Tom and Jerry

Tonight it was announced that Warner Bros was developing a live-action/CG hybrid film around Tom and Jerry. In other words, Tom and Jerry are getting the Garfield and Alvin and the Chipmunks treatment where they’ll be computer-generated characters running around real sets. That’s disturbing enough, but it’s also mentioned that it’ll be “an origin story that reveals how Tom and Jerry first meet and form their rivalry before getting lost in Chicago and reluctantly working together during an arduous journey home.” That’s right, an origin story for Tom and Jerry. What exactly is it that anyone needs to know? One’s a cat and the other is a mouse. I think everyone knows the basis of their rivalry! Why does everything need an explanation, an actually laid out history? Not everything benefits, and Tom and Jerry are most certainly way beyond requiring a setup.

On a similar note, Disney recently revealed that it was fast-tracking 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo with McG at the helm and yes, it’s an origin story. I know that there was a brief recitation of Nemo’s history in The Mysterious Island but even if given by Jules Verne himself, it always struck me as lame and an anticlimactic reveal. For a character as enigmatic as Nemo is throughout 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (and the Disney adaptation), virtually any history would be disappointing. The beauty is in that mystery and in letting readers and viewers try to get to know him with what little he provides through his actions and politics. If you throw his life story and psychology out there in the open, it gets distinctly less interesting in my view.

Oh, and the title 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo is even worse than X-Men Origins: Wolverine. It sounds like a one-shot spin-off from a comic line.

I Want to Believe

This post serves as a contribution to The X-Files Blog-a-Thon.

Earlier this week I completed a quest I set out upon last November: to watch all 202 episodes of The X-Files before the new film was released. I’d never really dedicated myself to following a television show until college rolled around, with the exceptions of From the Earth to the Moon and Band of Brothers. Science fiction always intrigued me, and I did manage to watch The X-Files: Fight the Future and a select few episodes from that time period, but otherwise the show slipped by me, to remain on my periphery until I was spurred by the specter of a new film and blessed with the wonders of Netflix. And so I spent nine months combing through all nine seasons.

The X-Files always spent a good deal of time on the debate between faith and reason, the irrational and the rational. The show was in no way subtle in crafting its leads as characters who would embody one or the other. At least until the last couple seasons when some roles were shifted around, Fox Mulder was the one willing to take irrational leaps of faith while Dana Scully stuck to science and fact. Their interpersonal chemistry and philosophical debating sustained much of the series, through subpar plots, hokey mythologies and awful early ’90s fashion.

The problem, as I see it, is that the viewing audience was rarely, if ever, asked to participate in the debate between Mulder and Scully. As most episodes progress, Scully is inevitably asked if not begged by Mulder and/or circumstance to concede the possibility of the impossible. The viewer, however, never even has the chance to make that leap. Rather, the show’s structure leads us to have actual knowledge of what Scully must eventually consider possible, and of what Mulder might suspect and believe. Typical episodes open by giving the viewer a privileged insight into the unbelievable act that the show’s FBI agents will proceed to investigate during the remaining forty minutes. We witness the alien abduction, the creature attack, the religious ritual, etc. Even if certain things are left to our imagination for the time being – like a complete view of the monster-of-the-week – we see more than enough to know that we’ve been privy to something out of the ordinary. Even when Mulder’s initial thoughts about a case prove wrong, often by way of Scully’s scientific sleuthing, we don’t doubt that something unbelievable is happening. The question is always what or how that something is, not whether it is.

Mulder and Scully

I frequently found myself hating the segments of the show that would cut away from our leads to show us suspect’s life or another attack by the monster or shady men in black suits conspiring in smoke-filled rooms. I wanted to be challenged. I wanted to be convinced by Mulder. I also wanted to be stymied by Scully’s science. Most of all, I wanted to be in the middle of that battleground of ideas. I wanted to have to grapple with both sides, reconcile one with the other and try to figure out what was truly occurring. Maybe that’s way too much to ask from a network television show riffing on police procedurals, but I think it would have been positively brilliant, especially if they were really daring and didn’t satisfy audience expectations for constant supernatural solutions. Mulder could win some weeks, Scully could win others, along with mixtures of both or neither. Keep us guessing and keep us involved and engaged.

I often mourned the manner in which Scully was in the unfortunate position of almost always being wrong about the big picture answer to any given case. She might successfully sort through the details to help hone Mulder’s crazy theories, but it was Mulder who would be right, even if his thoughts didn’t help write up a report for Assistant Director Skinner. This short-shrifting of Scully would grow more frustrating in the episodes where Mulder actively leaves her in the dark about his theories, generally later in the series. In eventual episodes (dare I point to the series finale?) this pattern would develop into an extreme exaggeration where Mulder is an all-knowing messiah ready with ridiculous insight into a situation while Scully isn’t even sure what the situation involves. There’s a point where I just feel sorry for Scully, having to deal with a partner who denies her true participation in the questions of a case. Not even she would be asked to believe in what Mulder might profess. At these times, Scully became a cypher for my own feelings of not being allowed to join the debate between faith and reason. I couldn’t choose or investigate those questions because the given episode would have revealed part of the answer to me. Scully would be unable to join the debate because Mulder (and the writers) was too busy playing cock-of-the-walk at a pace three steps ahead of her.

There are of course episodes that do a better job at disguising or limiting what the audience is shown, but we’re still rarely invited in. We’re outside observers, nodding in agreement with Mulder and hoping Scully will allow extreme possibilities to exist in her mental framework. [Of course, eventually Scully assumes the position of the believer in opposition to Agent Doggett - occasionally replacing Scully with Reyes - or turning it into a three person spectrum, but the formula remains the same.] I’d submit that this is one of the areas in which “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” succeeds so wildly, by constantly relishing the various narrators’ unreliability and subverting what we think we know until the end. This episode, and the few others by Darin Morgan, had some fun with the lead characters and our knowledge of the given situation, but we were still left out of the show’s quintessential question of faith versus reason.

None of this is meant to take away from all the things The X-Files did well, but I’m left believing there’s plenty of room for further development. Other shows have taken various aspects from the groundwork of The X-Files, so perhaps it’s only a matter of time before the core philosophical debate is rekindled elsewhere and taken to the next level. Time will tell.

Iron Man

The more I think about Iron Man the more I find it disappointing in its unwillingness to play things anything but safe. My biggest problem comes in Tony Stark’s change of heart regarding his company’s business model. After being ambushed and captured in a military convoy in Afghanistan while promoting a new missile system, he witnesses terrorists using his companies arms. Upon escaping and returning to Los Angeles, he decides that he wants Stark Enterprises to give up weapons manufacturing and focus on more peaceful and productive technologies. That’s all well and good, until the screenplay absolves Stark of involvement and true responsibility for those weapons falling into the enemy’s hands. Instead, it turns out to be a completely secret operation run by his partner, Obadiah Stane. The movie drops Stark’s examination of his life since the issue is presented less as an inherent issue of his chosen profession as one bad apple conducting secret and sinister weapons deals.

Rather than take a risk by giving the film’s protagonist culpability for more than basic executive negligence, he becomes an unwitting pawn. Perhaps worse, we only see Stark pay lip service to his plan to shift his company’s operations to peaceful productions. Stark follows his shocking declaration not by finding a way to mass produce the miniaturized Arc energy source that he quickly crafted in a terrorist cave, but by building a series of weaponized mechanical suits. Hmm, I’m not convinced Stark learned a damned thing at all. It seems he still believes that weapons are great as long as he can control them. And since Iron Man generally absolves him of any responsibility regarding Stark Enterprises technology reaching terrorists’ hands, the whole humanitarian angle is pretty much dropped by the end. Of course, none of that is to insinuate that the movie shouldn’t find a way to get Stark into the Iron Man suit, but rather to dare to touch on some of the character’s contradictions. It’s hard for me not to point to Batman Begins and the manner in which it delves into Bruce Wayne choosing to go after criminals by subverting the very legal structures he ultimately hopes to rebuild. In many ways, he has to become what he hates and fears most, and the film doesn’t shy away from these contradictions. Iron Man completely glosses over themes that can’t be generally reduced to black-and-white situations. It’s good light-hearted summer fun, but it could have been more. It could have actually said something.

I’d hope that the already announced sequel could deign to go a little darker with Tony Stark and examine the conflict between his company’s operations, what he claims to care about and what he actually does. Perhaps that could lead into the inevitable alcoholism plot.

Check it out at Ebert & Roeper.

On that note, I wish Roger Ebert the best with future surgeries. It’d be wonderful to have him up and able to speak again. His text reviews can be found at RogerEbert.com.

Below

“What if, when we took on that kraut ship, we didn’t sink ‘em? What if… they sunk us?”
“Oh, that’s a good twist.”

There’s a particularly funny moment halfway through Below, after most of the crew has decided the submarine is in some way haunted, that they sit down and riff on their situation. Specifically, on the possibility that they somehow died previously and are not in fact being haunted by the dead, but rather by the living. Basically, they’re talking about living out The Sixth Sense, except within a sub sixty years earlier. It’s a weird moment, since it draws your attention outside of the story to the twist-happy movies that arrived after Shyamalan’s spook debut, but it’s also hilarious the way the characters speculate about the possible moments they died but weren’t aware.

As said, despite some downplayed caveats, the piece is largely a doom-and-gloom view of what is happening with digital technologies finding mainstream roles in the movie industry, particularly regarding the manner in which movies are viewed. For maximum effect, there is a lot of nostalgia for the good ol’ days of seeing great movies at nice theaters with enthusiastic audiences. Meanwhile, modern times are characterized by people growing discontent with theaters and turning to the smallest screens they can find, on which they can barely make out what’s happening, and this trend spells the downfall of all that is good and filmic. Denby does later discuss sitting down and actually enjoying some movies on decent home theater setups, but he can’t resist returning to the iPod or small portable DVD players as the end game of dissipating theater audiences. He seems to believe that kids will all grow up not only being used to small screens, but desiring them. Of course, this seems to fly in the face of all industry trends of figuring out ways to make the screens of all types of devices, from cell phones to televisions, as big as humanly possible. Even he eventually concedes that televisions will likely end up the size of walls, and yet, this can’t compare to the size of theater screens that force viewers to “submit” to the movies. A variety of other complaints are made about digital formats, from compression and sharpness and whatever, most of which is exaggerated by nostalgia, influenced by the flaws of already old technologies and a misunderstanding of the technology’s inevitable ability to give the filmmaker complete control over virtually everything. If the filmmaker wants that “painterly” look that celluloid might provide more naturally, they’ll get it either via computers or some combination of lenses and lighting or any other technology.

While some superficial concerns are provided about irreconcilable differences between film and digital, the running theme in the piece seems to be a fear that watching movies without a large audience will destroy an extremely valuable part of the experience. I say, maybe, but that experience doesn’t really exist anymore anyway. Aside from a few specific theaters like the ArcLight (discussed later), the movie-going experience is rife with annoyances. People are downright inconsiderate of others, and any quick Google search (of say, “movie theater attendance”) would yield tons of firsthand accounts of horrible experiences. People fumble with food, they talk to friends, they bring children or even babies to inappropriate films, they check their illuminated phones for texts, etc. God forbid some teens decide to turn your screening into their personal episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. This is why people are leaving theaters for the comfort of their own homes. I caught an 11 PM showing of The Matrix Reloaded on a Saturday night back, and there were at least two crying babies in the theater. When I saw Sideways, a man’s cell phone rang not once, not twice but thrice. These instances are hardly exclusive to myself. What’s a viewer to do? If things go right, they politely notify the offender and the nuisance stops. At worst, they try to find a manager, miss part of the movie, and maybe get something done about it. Everyone knows this, except it seems for movie studios that continue to blame decreasing attendances on everything but this. Sure, when an audience is polite and really connects with the film, there’s a fantastic energy there that can’t be replicated at home, but except for when I pay top dollar for ArcLight tickets, that’s only happened for me once over the last three years.

So when Denby talks about the great social aspects of the movie theater, I say great. Point me and the rest of America to those theaters, and don’t tell me I need a souped-up De Lorean to get there.

In a theatre, you submit to a screen; you want to be mastered by it, not struggle to get cozy with it….

The neighborhood theatres that thrived at the same time were easier to deal with. Slipping in and out of them, we avoided the stern white-shoed matrons who patrolled the aisles; sometimes we arrived in the middle of the movie and stayed on until it reached the same point in the next show—we just wanted to go to the movies.

Compare the above two statements. They appear several paragraphs apart, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how they can coexist. For someone arguing that watching a movie on anything but a movie screen is a disservice to the movie, I can’t even come close to understanding the apparent nostalgia for sitting down to watch a movie at any point but its beginning. Now that’s a disservice that few could intelligently contend with.

And it brings up another advantage of home viewing. People don’t need to arrive at a set time. If they can set aside two hours to watch a film, then they can watch it. No one else’s schedule gets in the way.

Additionally, there’s been a lot of talk around the ‘net about this notion of “submit[ting]” to the movie and how it’s exclusive to the movie theater experience. I say hogwash. Sure, my television may not physically dominate me, but if I turn the lights down my brain is perfectly capable of focusing on the screen without contemplating what’s going on with the furniture it sits on. Granted, a bigger screen would be nice, but as already stated, larger and cheaper screens are just around the corner. That’s a temporary setback, not an inherent limitation. Critics also tend to bring up the tendency for distraction at home. To that, I really only have to refer to the examples of in-theater distractions that I’ve already rattled off, but I’ll say more. At home there is a matter of self-control. If you really don’t want to be distracted or interrupted in the midst of a film, there is no reason you can’t do that, barring a natural disaster. Go to the bathroom before you press play, fill your drink, turn off your phone, prep the lights and enjoy. Perhaps most importantly, make sure you have the time to watch the film uninterrupted. Whether you’re watching a movie on DVD or some On Demand network, you have access to the running time. There is no reason why a viewing experience at home cannot be focused and distraction free. You sure as hell have more control over your environment at home than you do at the theater.

At poorly run multiplexes, projector bulbs go dim, the prints develop scratches or turn yellow, the soles of your shoes stick to the floor, people jabber on cell phones, and rumbles and blasts bleed through the walls.

It’s hard to call such theaters “poorly run” when they make up the vast majority of American theaters. That’s the standard. A “poorly run” theater would be a nightmare.

The lobby contains a restaurant, a bar, and a book-and-gift shop. Before the movie, people hang out and have a drink or leaf through a hot new novel or a movie-star biography. The rest rooms are spotless, and the concession stand serves delicious coffee. All the seats are reserved, and they are plush, with plenty of legroom. The steeply raked auditorium is dark, and insulated from the sound of the other theatres in the same multiplex. Is this some sort of upper-bourgeois dream of the great good place? A padded cell for wealthy movie nuts? No, it’s an actual multiplex, the ArcLight, on Sunset Boulevard near Vine.The idea of user-friendly theatres may be catching on. Sumner Redstone’s daughter Shari, the president of National Amusements, the family-owned theatre business, has vowed to convert half the lobbies of the chain’s hundred and nineteen theatres to social spaces with comfortable lounges, and to build more. Martinis will be served; newspapers and magazines will be offered. If theatres go in this Starbucks-plus-cocktails direction, the older audience might come back, with a positive effect on filmmaking, and the value of the movies as an art form and an experience could be preserved. After you are seated at the ArcLight, an usher standing at the front of the auditorium tells you who wrote and directed the movie and how long it is. He promises that he and another usher will stay for a while to make sure that the projection and the sound are up to snuff. There are no advertisements following his speech, and only four coming attractions. The movie begins, and you are utterly lost in it.

The ArcLight is indeed an amazing theater. However, the Arclight has one other advantage that Denby missed, and it’s the fact that there is a strict no talking and no cell phones policy. Patrons will be removed for being a nuisance, and the presence of ushers not only ensures that but also cements that policy in the theater’s atmosphere. For many, that’s where it’s appeal is, not in the trendy lobby. It’s the in-theater experience, where people are there to see and love movies, not to socialize or treat it like a private playground.

On the other hand, the ArcLight’s mention raises a very important issue that Denby ignores entirely, that being the economic pressures on consumers. The piece spends a whole lot of time worrying about the production costs and returns for studios, but what about the economic factors at play with the viewers? Normal ticket prices are already north of $8 for most of the country, with urban areas even higher. The luxuries of the ArcLight are factored in as an additional premium. If concessions are involved, the price to go see a movie becomes really high. For all the wondering about home theaters gaining popularity, it seems obvious that cost is involved. Sure, you could go pay top dollar for the theater experience, or you could wait three to five months for the DVD, which will likely cost two to two and a half times a single ticket price. Surely that’s playing a role in the market. I know it does for me, and that’s ignoring the entire Netflix enterprise.

Young people get many more movies sent their way than are warranted by their numbers—almost half of the audience but only twenty-five per cent of the population is aged between twelve and thirty….

The trouble is that grownups are less likely than kids to go on opening weekends (they wait for reviews and reports from friends), so, apart from the fall awards season, when most of the serious movies are released, they don’t pull their weight in terms of what gets made.

Mr. Denby seems to be placing a certain amount of blame here on the grownups themselves, which is unfair to say the least. One can argue about whether their waiting for critical and peer reviews is a good or a bad thing. Perhaps it’s a positive sign that they desire quality films. Or perhaps it’s a sign that this demographic is less than inclined to be exploratory, and instead wait to be told what they should or should not see rather than deciding (and seeing) for themselves. Neither condition is particularly important right now since there’s pretty universal agreement that there is very little grownup entertainment being produced anyway. Roger Ebert has been rightly attacking the industry over this for years and years, and I’d say he has correctly pinpointed one of the key oppositions, that being the MPAA’s rating system. An ‘R’ rating must, by definition, be appropriate for someone as young as 17 years old. Since ‘NC-17′ and unrated films are virtually banned in practice if not in agreements between theater chains and the studios, the ‘R’ is the de facto adult rating. (The ‘NC-17′ rating has the unfortunate history of being the successor to the ‘X’, which was largely used to accompany pornography, while choosing to go without a rating flies in the face of the MPAA itself, an organization funded by and serving all of the notable studios and theater chains.) While Roger Ebert and a handful of others continue to try and lobby for a true adult rating, and while the MPAA’s ratings board has announced some superficial and inconsequential reforms, it’s unlikely the Hollywood machinery is going to begin catering to a grownup audience without that audience finding its own voice.

Should they continue to shoot on film or switch to digital? Digital technology opens enormous possibilities for filmmakers, and even for exhibitors, but it also offers a radical break with the many ways of watching movies that have given us pleasure in the past.

It needs to be pointed out that – for the big studios at least – the method of production has little to do with the method of distribution. For starters, two recent blockbusters in Revenge of the Sith and Superman Returns were shot wholly digitally but were primarily projected on film at movie theaters due to the few digitally-equipped theaters currently in the U.S. Besides, movies shot on celluloid are now routinely transferred into digital formats, called Digital Intermediates, for post-production processes like color timing. These two formats interact all the time. Shooting a movie in one format does not mean it must be distributed in the same manner, especially for the big studios where the cost of switching formats is negligible.

It also needs to be pointed out that digital distribution in no way precludes movies from being projected in theaters. Denby acknowledges this later in the article, but for this moment seems to believe that digital inherently involves a move to home theaters or his often mentioned and fear-inducing example of the iPod.

Finally, I want to touch on two bits of studio propaganda that Denby seems to repeat. One is that “theatre attendance is holding up.” This is actually not true. Attendance was widely reported to have dropped by 9% in 2005, and a quick search tells me that 2006 was trending down some 5% by May (link). The overall box office is holding up, and generally climbing, but that has a whole lot to do with rising ticket prices. Attendance has actually been falling. There’s a reason that the film industry in the United States is one of very few in the world that don’t report actual ticket sales. For that matter, it’s one of the only industries in the U.S. that reports solely dollar values and not number of units. CDs and video games are recorded by units and revenue. Instead studios push out box office revenues every Sunday afternoon and con the press and public to believe their nonsense about the latest tentpole summer release breaking some record. Sure it did, if you ignore inflation and other factors contributing to higher ticket prices. Actual ticket sales would yield an interesting and useful number. What we get is cynical public relations spin.

Secondly…

After years of double-digit growth, DVD sales, while still high, have levelled off and cancelled out the recovery at the box office.

Don’t let this blurb mislead you. DVD sales growth has indeed slowed, but that doesn’t mean sales are dropping. They’re just increasing at a slower pace. The studios like to pretend sales are falling and that’s why they’re in a rush to get consumers on the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD gravy trains. Sure, they do hope to get people to buy the same movies over again in a new format, but the new HD disc war is also about who gets to control the medium. The different studios all have stakes in one or both of the new formats, and there is much money to be made from being tied to the format that is ultimately used most (assuming either of these stick around), especially when they may have missed the boat on being behind the DVD tech.

But more importantly, DVD sales are not dropping. Sales growth, however, is, and no one should be the least bit surprised by this. That’s exactly what happens when a new piece of technology, like DVD players, reaches market saturation. If Paramount wants to blame this phenomenon on why they might not turn a profit on Mission: Impossible III well, by all means, but it’d be patently ridiculous for such a large company to not understand the basics of market penetration.

My apologies for this rant being a tad unfocused, but well, the article itself wasn’t exactly streamlined and it meandered into a lot of topics I felt were worthy of touching upon.