Cloverfield and Hand-Held Camera Storytelling

Much like King Kong (last time I mention it for a while, I promise), Cloverfield (Matt Reeves, 2008) is another film that divided audiences. Some found the hand-held camera nauseating, others described it as "gimmickry" or "YouTube storytelling" (quotes culled from Rotten Tomatoes, cba to fully reference them), or as just another way of telling a traditional narrative. The characters picked up a lot of slack, mostly for being boring yuppies with bad decision-making skills. Get your brains in gear, reviewers.

The most important thing to realise about Cloverfield is that it's not really about the boring New York yuppies. Cloverfield is about the wider picture, of which we get only the tiniest of glimpses: we are locked, from start to finish, into the literal view of ordinary civilians, and we know just the smallest amount more than they (thanks to the incredibly successful viral campaign). We may follow these people for the duration of the film, but essentially they serve as one small perspective on a much larger event. Criticisms that it "lacks tension" are deflected when looked at like this: horror is at its most effective when it is left to our imagination, and Cloverfield works in this same way. The Rob/Beth narrative may not be fantastic or tense, but the glimpses we do get of New York, of the lives of other civilians, of the actions of the military compensate fully. Take for instance the opening title that frames the footage as military evidence. It poses so many questions - what is the state of the US currently? Is the monster still alive? Did it win? Are there other such stories to be told? It expands the story hugely, but crucially this expansion happens only in our imaginations. We are able to create a far more cohesive world than the filmmakers could have, even if the film took a broader view of events.

For this reason Cloverfield is so much more than a "traditional narrative". Keeping the audience in a position of ignorance is fundamentally different from showing the wider picture with different angles and perspectives. Cloverfield doesn't really have an ending. The movie finishes when the camera is lost beneath a collapsed bridge, and while this concludes the Rob/Beth narrative, the story of the monster, which is the main narrative, is far from finished. The hand-held camera format can successfully be accused of "gimmickry" at times - see recent release Project X - but here it is just not the case.

I would go so far as to argue that because the 'monster narrative' is the real core of the film, it doesn't matter that the Rob/Beth narrative isn't that great. The characters are mostly boring, they're a homogeneous bunch taken from a section of society with which most of the audience would have little sympathy with: they're rich, pretty and self-absorbed. Only the Lizzy Caplan character has anything remotely interesting about her. What this serves to do, however, is increase the verisimilitude of the film. It is precisely because they're so mundane that it works - their lack of wit, their irrational decision-making and general helplessness makes them feel like normal people. In subservience to the 'monster narrative' it is more important that the characters are believable New Yorkers than fascinating people. If anything, it is good that the focus is on the wider events; if the 'monster narrative', a nuanced and beguiling character narrative and the audience assimilation into the film through the immediacy of the hand-held camera were all woven together it may well be that Cloverfield would be too cluttered, and the least important is the character narrative.

Had the film been shot like a normal film, yet kept the same level of audience ignorance, it would have been much less effective. We would get impatient, and start wondering why we're not being given any context. Then, when the characters die at the end and the film finishes it would feel like a con. The restrictions would seem incredibly arbitrary and frustrating. Setting Cloverfield up as camcorder footage circumvents this issue entirely - we are happy to accept this as how the film works, and it makes sense that we are left in the dark on the events unfolding in wider New York.

It is worth mentioning that Cloverfield has a 77% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so it was a far from reviled film. It was praised for the level of immersion and the spectacular set-pieces, but I felt that there is a general under-appreciation of how ably it uses the hand-held format. Hopefully this piece provides a counterpoint.

King Kong: New Versus Old

So after not posting for a few weeks, when I do decide to do another one it's on the same subject as the last one: King Kong. Now, for some reason I seem to end up talking about King Kong a lot, and I'm not sure why really. I suppose it's because I like it and seem to be one of the few able to sit through it without getting bored by its hefty runtime - the major complaint, alongside Jack Black as Carl Denham (who I actually like, more on whom later). Perhaps I'm a Kong apologist, who knows: onward regardless.

The 1933 original which I watched for the first time today is generally (universally?) seen as the best version, and indeed, one of the best films of all time. This view is seriously rose-tinted. It's all about empathy.

In the original, Kong is a wild beast. He's animalistic. He's insensitive. He lacks empathy. While pursuing the fleeing Ann Darrow in both Skull Island and in New York, Kong eats (or at least gnaws at) a fairly off-putting number of people. He just picks them up, chews them for a moment then flings them to the ground. Essentially, Kong is a more accurate - if you can even use 'accurate' in describing a fantastical creature - representation of what a giant ape would be like. That could be fine handled differently, but it presents a few narrative problems. Kong's attraction to Darrow is no more profound than a magpie's attraction to a shiny coin. He is fascinated by her whiteness: all previous sacrifices have been black girls who are apparently only attractive enough to eat (the 1930s were less than racially aware). He wants no more than to hold her in his mighty fist, and never looks at Darrow beyond her whiteness.

Because of this, Darrow shows no emotion towards Kong other than fear. She doesn't interact with him at all - in fact, she says almost nothing for the remainder of the film once taken by Kong, instead she shrieks and shrieks. Well renowned film critic Richard Corliss from Time Magazine says Darrow came to sympathise with the beast. This is simply untrue: there is no evident emotional connection between Darrow and Kong. She says nothing (verbally or physically) to him, and even in the climactic scene atop the Empire State Building her anguish is not for Kong being slowly killed by the biplanes but for being stranded 381 metres above the streets below supported only by an out-of-control beast. Jay Antani, who mounts the most persuasive case against the remake, takes the view that the tragedy of Kong is his role as 'an outcast/schoolyard bully who falls in love with the local beauty–a woman who will never accept him'. How two-dimensional is that? Their entire dynamic can be explained in one scene, with no further development needed: Kong likes woman, woman resists. It doesn't change for the rest of the film. Dull!

There is an empathetic collapse here, and the problems with that are obvious. There is no emotional pull for the audience. In the remake we, channeled though Darrow, slowly come to understand Kong. As a character he is far, far more complex than in the original; the Kong we see in the original is the same Kong that the supporting characters see in the remake - it is through Darrow's interaction and gradually developing empathy for Kong that we come to understand him. This window is lacking in the original.

The second problem with having no connection between Kong, Darrow and the audience is that the action scenes have no emotional weight. The T-Rex fight may be animated with great skill, but without empathy for Kong we don't know whether we should be rooting for him or not. Sure, if the T-Rex wins Darrow will get eaten, but it's not clear whether Kong has dinner plans for Darrow or merely wants to keep her around to do...what, exactly? Manhandle her until she slowly starves? That doesn't sound a whole lot better than getting eaten by a dinosaur.

In contrast, the T-Rex fight in the remake is driven by character. Rather than just being a fight scene in the shallowest sense, it is a way (a really awesome way, I might add) of developing the Darrow/Kong relationship. Kong is enraged that Darrow has escaped, so sets of in pursuit and in doing so winds up having to defeat three T-Rexes while keeping her safe. At this point we are far more invested in both Darrow and Kong than in the original: we see Darrow trying to entertain Kong, we see her gradual understanding, and we understand the simple enjoyment Kong gets out of watching her perform. By making it clear that the audience is on the side of Darrow and Kong, the fight becomes far more engaging: Kong has to viciously fight these enormous creatures while keeping her safe. In comparison with the original, Kong has a far greater task.

Furthermore, once the fight is over, Kong does not simply snatch Darrow up and carry her off again, he gets upset. She has offended him. The contrast between his bravery and power in battle and his sensitivity afterwards is fascinating. Perhaps this was enabled by technology: Kong is as expressive as any human. Would this emotional detail have been possible with the crude methods available to the original? In that film a close up of Kong's face caused ripples of laughter among my coursemates - he looked like a gurning moron. The remade Kong has infinitely more depth. I would argue that this is a rare instance of technology actually being put to use for narrative purposes, instead of just making things looks better.

Lastly, a few other quick points. As neatly articulated by Jay Antani, 'in the original, Driscoll was the ship’s first mate; here, he’s Denham’s screenwriter and, hence, the Denham-Darrow-Driscoll triangulation is made more taut.' Yep. The biplane fight is shot far better than in the original. Kong is shot from further out, emphasising his impotence against the aerial threat. Denham is actually really good, even played by Jack Black. In the original he's stiff and uninteresting, in the remake he's wonderfully flawed. Jack Black is very unheroic and quite ridiculous by nature and it suits this new Denham perfectly. There is also the question of whether Darrow loves Kong. It's not obvious, and I'm not sure of the answer.

There. That was my attempt at doing some serious analysis, Film Crit Hulk style. 

Just a bunch of things

Every now and again I feel the need to write about various things I've been thinking about in recent days, but usually they're not really interesting enough to warrant a full post. I've not done anything serious in a while because of a busy (sleeping) schedule but hopefully I'll be able to put out something about a defence of censorship (really) in a week or so. But in the meantime I'm going to blather about some shit.

King Kong and the length of films.

I've just finished watching King Kong (2005) on ITV and a few thoughts have crossed my mind.

It's been heavily criticised for being too long - it's over three hours - but I find in general accusations of being too long to be such an odd criticism. Films feel long not because they're lengthy, but rather there is a dearth of content. The first hour of King Kong admittedly could do with being put through a vigorous weight-loss programme, but once things get going with the appearance of Kong it does not drag at all. The film is not without its flaws, but merely judging it on the run-time feels just a little bit immature.

I like films to be able to compete with books, and no one would for one second think to complain about the length of a book. Is three hours really such a long time? Perhaps the nature of film is more fatiguing on the eyes than reading, but in my experience a boring book feels just as tedious as a boring film, and I've become accustomed to both (cheers uni). At least the boring bit in Broken Blossoms only lasted an hour and a half - the boring bit in Sense and Sensibility lasted about fourteen...

Similarly, why is 90 minutes the golden length for a film? That is extremely restrictive, and extremely arbitrary. The only important thing is for the run-time to suit the narrative: even 90 minutes can feel like an age if it's packing an underdeveloped script. Perhaps the best case for this is the Ridley Scott film Kingdom of Heaven. Ripped apart upon release, the DVD version contained the director's cut which restored 45-minutes of footage to push it up to a massive 194 minutes, turning a bad film into one of the best of the year. Often, director's cuts are over-indulgent but that was not the case here. Why the initial studio-imposed cut? Because it was too long. And too political. Despite being so much longer, the extended version feels so much shorter, because it is more engaging.


Radiohead

Let's stop prevaricating, Radiohead are one of the all-time greats. The established pantheon of The Beatles,  Stones, Dylan, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix etc. has been unchanged for decades; probably the last act to break into it is (debatably) U2. Put Radiohead toe-to-toe with the aformentioned musicians and they can hold their own.

There seems to be, broadly, four boxes that need to be ticked in order to be considered one of the best. These are:

An all-time great album:  The likely candidate album is OK Computer, widely seen as one of the best ever. Kid A and The Bends are also in with a shout, which brings me to the second point.

Consistency and longevity: The heavy-weight bands all enjoyed a period where they could do little wrong, and every release was met with acclaim. Pablo Honey aside, Radiohead haven't released a bad album. Even the one seen as the weakest, Hail to the Thief, is fantastic.

Popularity: Usually quality begets popularity, so it is unsurprising that Radiohead are popular. They sell out every venue they play, they draw thousands to festivals across the world, they sell huge numbers of albums, which keep selling beyond initial release.

Trend-setting:  Kid A changed music (moreso than OK Computer, which although outstanding, has spawned few imitators). Soft and sparse yet complex and dynamic has been a hallmark of American bands, such as Animal Collective, for several years now, which attempt to follow the Radiohead template.

A Pre-emptive strike against my mates attack on Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip

My mate is currently writing an attack on Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip, but is really slow and I can't be bothered waiting for him to finish so that I can write this. He really doesn't like That Shalt Always Kill, saying that the lyrics are superficial and condescending. He's wrong.

I was gonna post all the lyrics but it's really long and most of it won't be discussed. So watch the video.

Thou Shalt Always Kill does seem superficial and condescending initially. Who is this guy to tell me what to think? The fact that I agree largely with what he says is irrelevant - he is trying to shape society in the same way that Moses shaped Christian society, and with the same authority.

This is a simplistic reading. There are some obvious clues. Firstly, this is a personal list; "Thou shalt not go into the wood with your boyfriend's best friend, take drugs, and cheat on him"; "Thou shalt not return to the same club or bar week in, week out just 'cause you once saw a girl there that you fancied but you're never gonna fucking talk to." It is pretty plain to see that these relate to Pip personally; by including these it becomes clear that these are not commandments for the wider population, rather just things he thinks.

The more important message comes right at the end, with the couplet, "Thou Shalt think for yourself/ And thou shalt always...thou shalt always...kill." Both these lines essentially say the same thing, in different ways. "Thou shalt think for yourself" is the ultimate message of the song, showing the Pip is fully aware that his word is not to be taken as gospel, but rather we should look more closely at the world, ignoring what others may think - their opinion is of no greater value than your own - and form a set of opinions or morals individual to each person. The lyrics to the song are just Pips opinions, and he is aware of this.

"Thou shalt always kill" has the same effect. It's a subtle trick; he sucks you in with comments on Steven Fry and the NME with which the majority of his audience would agree, then he twists the most famous of the Ten Commandments "Thou Shalt Not Kill" into a distorted opposite. It's not simply "thou shalt kill": the 'always' makes it into a horrifying never-ending bloodbath. He's checking that you're listening and not merely going along with his spiel. In fact, one review I've read even refers to it hilariously as 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' - way to miss the point there, reviewer. 

Lastly, it's also a song about religion. It hardly needs to be said that the song is a riff on the Ten Commandments, but the theme of self-awareness outlined above is turned against the domineering nature of Christianity (specifically, but religion in general is also relevant). Religious imagery is used in a modern context, "Thou shalt not take the names of Johnny Cash etc. in vain," (interestingly he only uses musicians that share an initial with the big J-Dog, and also Desmond Dekker who sang 'Israelites'. And Syd Barrett (?)) and "Thou shalt not worship pop idols or follow lost prophets (Lostprophets)." There is a conflict in interpretation here, by using "in vain" is he elevating Johnny Cash et al to alongside Jesus, or is he bringing Jesus down alongside Johnny Cash? I'm more inclined to go with the latter, tying in as it does with the Jesus Christ Superstar image of recent decades. Bringing religion into the mix is another facet of the 'think for yourself' motto - they have no more worth than a set of values that you work out for yourself. 

Auden's Sunday Best

Too long for a twitter post (c'mon, "tweet" is lame) and too not-interesting for a status update, this undernourished post has thus been dumped unceremoniously here. Also it's about poetry. Yeah.

I get to read W.H. Auden in a module next semester. I'm actually quite excited. You can thank Christopher Hitchens for that. Anywho, there's one poem of his that I particularly like, so here it is:

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone.

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum,

Bring out the coffin...let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle, moaning overhead,

Scribbling on the sky the message: He is Dead.

Put crepe bows 'round the necks of public doves,

Let traffic policemen wear black, cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East, my West.

My working week and my Sunday rest.

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song,

I thought love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now, put out every one.

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.

Pour out the ocean and sweep up the wood,
For nothing now can ever come to any good." 

Lovely, in't it? Because my reading skills are surprisingly iffy for someone that studies literature at university, I've always read the line in the third stanza as 'My working week and my Sunday best'. It was with dismay that I found out otherwise, not because I felt illiterate, but because I actually prefer my version. I prefer the contrast of the weekly toil - the drudgery, the mundanity - with getting suited and booted and being at one's best. 'Rest' feels apathetic in comparison, lacking in purpose and decisiveness. 'Sunday best' even maintains the religious imagery - doesn't that tradition stem from looking nice for church?

S'all today, folks.

Zooey Deschanel and Katy Perry: Not twins, alter-egos

Everyone's noticed how indie goddess Zooey Deschanel and pop-slut Katy Perry look alike.

It's like they're twins or something! 

However, Katy Perry is not Deschanel's long-lost sibling. No, instead Perry is her evil alter-ego. I think I'm onto something here. I'll break it down.

Appearance

Our pair of lovely lasses might look almost indistinguishable, but the key's in the details. Deschanel comes across as modest; Perry flaunts her modesty at every opportunity. What is mean by this is: boobs. We never really get to see any of Zooeys, but Katy Perry's approach to her boobs is best illustrated by a quote from Abraham Lincoln: 'you can show all your boobs some of the time, you can show some of your boobs all the time, but you can't show all your boobs all the time'. Perry's a slut; Deschanel's demure: 

"But I want to show all my boobs, all the time!" - Katy Perry

Relationships

They say people are judged by the company one keeps; one of our ladies socialises with esteemed gentlemen like Russell Brand and elegant ladies like Rebecca Black; the other hangs with scruffy oiks like that dodgy Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Can you guess which?

Hands off, you disreputable ruffian, you

The evil side clearly has a stronger pull on Ms. Perry than it does Ms. Deschanel. The latter goes for guys that you'd be happy take home to your mother; the former goes for guys who should be kept away from your mother at all costs, let he bangs her.

Music

A necessary part of being 'the perfect woman', which Zooey has apparently made her goal, is being able to sing and shit. She turned out to be annoyingly good at that too, when she released a fairly decent album of folky tunes, with, yes, a 'kooky' edge a few years ago. Then there's also the above clip which is slap-bang in line with her 'adorkable' persona. Katy Perry, as ever yang to Deschanel's yin, sings songs about pulling girls in fairly extensive detail. It's really classy and stuff. Zooey is the kind of girl that you can believe like The Smiths (because The Smiths are so indie, insouciant, and appeal to those with an outcast complex (all eighty billion of them) dontchaknow)

"Some girls' mothers are bigger than other girls' mothers" - a real poet, that Morrissey

Conclusion

I think that's enough evidence to assert that Zooey Deschanel and Kety Perry, while facially eerily similar, diverge as far as possible when it comes to absolutely everything else. ZD is deliberately indie, KP literally makes 'pop'ular music; ZD looks like she'd side with the nerd at school; KP would be the bully. I may be clearly in favour of Deschanel here, but I'd bet Katy Perry would poll pretty strongly if they went up against each other in a popularity contest. 

Admission: This post is intended to be one that gets me hits. The previous and only other time I have written about a celebrity also happens to be my second most trafficked-post ever; what can I say, I guess people really like Megan Fox. Also, (500) Days of Summer was on telly tonight so there's that too. 

Some charities are 10 000 times more effective than others. It's worth knowing which.

The British public love to give to charity. From big BBC-led television extravaganzas like Children in Need, Sports Relief and Comic Relief to your everyday person raising money after the death of a relative, we as a nation seem to relish giving. It's an undervalued national character trait, if you ask me.

What we don't do, though, when deciding to donate to third-world-relief charities, is to take time to consider which charities have the best cost to result ratio. It's the big names charities that take in the majority of our dough, the charities with a broad scope. That's not a slight: it's difficult and tedious to do because there are so many charities seeking to make a difference. It's a shame there is less awareness of the differing potential for change across charities because it makes a massive difference. According to the excellent givingwhatwecan.org "it is not even a matter of some charities being 10 or 100 times as effective: even restricted to the field of health programs in developing countries, research shows that some are up to 10,000 times as effective as others." Damn. So what they're saying is that for every live you improve giving to a less effective charity you could be improving ten thousand lives. 


Giving What We Can is an organisation in which all members have taken a pledge to give 10% of their earnings  to the most efficient charities. It sort of feels like a group of super-philanthropists with a dauntingly noble dedication to making a difference. However, if you're put off by the scarily large 10% figure, like I have been, they also speak an enormous amount of sense on giving efficiently and effectively. Even if you just give what you feel comfortable with, knowing which charities do the best work will enhance the value of the sum many times. If I were to go further on the best charities and so on I would just be quoting the website, so for convenience have a big juicy link instead.