Battle: Los Angeles

Posted on March 11, 2011 at 3:40 pm

Destined to be remembered primarily as yet another step toward closing the gap between games and movies, the essence of “Battle: Lost Angeles” is a lot of boom-boom and a bunch of “ooo-rah.” And essence is all it is; no room here for anything but action. That’s a good thing because every time they start talking, you hope for the chases and explosions to start up again.

We see that the world is under attack and then we see 24 hours earlier, just enough time for brief introductions to the characters we’ll be following. Come on, say it along with me! Seen-it-all and seen-too-much vet on his last assignment, still struggling with survivor guilt over the men who died on his watch, innocent from the sticks whose mother signed for him to enlist at 17, guy about to get married, Navy corpsman earning his American citizenship and hoping to become a doctor, team leader just out of Officers Training School and about to become a father, etc. etc. It doesn’t matter much because pretty soon they will all be wearing so much gear and running around so fast we will hardly be able to tell them apart.

At first, it appears to be meteor showers that for some reason were undetected until they were about to crash off the coast of California and some other regions. But then we learn that the objects hurtling toward earth are slowing on descent; they are mechanical. And then stuff starts blowing up in a “textbook military operation” from another planet. And they have all the intel. We know nothing about who they are, what they want, what weapons they have, and basically, how to stop them from the complete annihilation that appears to be their goal. Troops are mobilized and deployed, with circumstances changing so quickly around them that quickly they are providing more information and support than they are getting. Our group is originally sent to rescue a small group of civilians and get them out of the way before US forces bomb the city to eradicate the enemy. But things are far worse than they thought. Contrary to their briefing, the aliens are attacking by air as well as ground. Their mission becomes survival, recon, and then out and out combat.

It tries to be “Independence Day” crossed with “Black Hawk Down.” It doesn’t come close to either. It’s howlingly bad in places, with clunky construction and ham-handed attempts to insert moments of drama in the midst of all the action (one of the men just happens to be the brother of a Marine who died under the Staff Sergeant’s command, and sadder but wiser civilians and fighting forces learn that war with aliens is hellier than ever). No one expects this film to be anything more than a delivery system for adrenaline and testosterone, with a bit of alien autopsy and some welcome recognition of the abilities and integrity of the military, but even in that category, it doesn’t pass muster.

How Movie Trailers Trick Us — Alan Zilberman

Posted on March 11, 2011 at 3:37 pm

My friend and fellow critic Alan Zilberman has a great blog post on how trailers trick us. He uses examples like “Battle: Los Angeles” to illustrate the way that trailers “use clever obfuscation to make our imaginations work against us.”
Of course, that’s their job.
And it’s a very specialized expertise. There are companies that do nothing but make trailers (remember, Cameron Diaz owned one in “The Holiday”). Almost-completed movies are delivered to them, many of them not very good. In a way, the good ones are harder to summarize. But in any case, the job of the trailer is not to accurately represent the movie; it is to get you to buy a ticket.
Zilberman’s description of the “Battle: Los Angeles” trailer could apply just as well to most of what is out there:

The trailer works because a) it reveals little about the movie and b) it makes you want to see it anyway. Watching the trailer again, its composition can be seen as clever marketing or – as I hope to demonstrate – a cynical ploy.

By presenting tense images without context, it forces the viewer to imagine what, precisely, is happening. There’s no need for basic storytelling elements like characters or plot, as we’re more than willing to create the heroic/crazed situations these figures find themselves in. Moreover, the juxtaposition of sci-fi action and haunting music suggests heft/drama that’s not necessarily there.

And Wikipedia describes the classic trailer structure:

Most trailers have a three-act structure similar to a feature-length film. They start with a beginning (act 1) that lays out the premise of the story. The middle (act 2) drives the story further and usually ends with a dramatic climax. Act 3 usually features a strong piece of “signature music” (either a recognizable song or a powerful, sweeping orchestral piece). This last act often consists of a visual montage of powerful and emotional moments of the film and may also contain a cast run if there are noteworthy stars that could help sell the movie.

Some trailers affirmatively misrepresent movies to make them seem more — or sometimes less — violent or racy than they really are. My current favorite example is the commercial for “Gnomeo & Juliet.” In the sweet, G-rated movie, there’s a brief sight gag of a garden gnome wearing a thong. When he walks away we get a little glimpse of ceramic gnome tushie. In the commercial, for some reason they show that scene but cover him up with a CGI-added pantie. Of course this takes away the entire reason for having the shot in the commercial in the first place. Steve Zahn got a similar pair of CGI underpants in the trailer for “Saving Silverman,” disguising what in the movie is some nudity and crude humor.
Cracked has my all-time favorite parody of movie trailers — you have to watch it a couple of times to get just how perfect it is.

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Between Two Worlds

Posted on March 11, 2011 at 8:30 am

Between Two Worlds, released in 1944, is the story of a mysterious voyage from London to America. As they sail, each of them guesses or is told that they are dead and on their way to where they will be judged and sent to either heaven or hell. We learn each of their stories and we see how they respond to the news and to the opportunity to think about their lives, their choices, their regrets, and their future. The passengers include a cocky American journalist always seeking an edge (John Garfield), a wealthy snob (Isobel Elsom) and her quiet husband (Gilbert Emery), a gold-digging actress (Faye Emerson), a thuggish businessman who thinks he can buy his way out of anything, a minister, and a humble woman who has devoted her life to caring for others and dreams of a quiet cottage with a garden (the luminous Sara Allgood). When the examiner (Sydney Greenstreet) arrives to talk with them about how they will be treated in the afterlife, there are a number of confrontations, realizations, surprises, and lessons learned.

This is a neglected gem with quiet power, well worth watching and discussing.

Mars Needs Moms

Posted on March 10, 2011 at 6:00 pm

There is one perfectly charming moment in “Mars Needs Moms,” but it does not come until the closing credits, when we get some live action glimpses of the voice actors. Their faces are covered with reference dots and they are strapped into contraptions so that computers can turn them into computerized 3D animation. We get to see them perform some scenes we have just watched with much more energy and life than anything in the movie. Important note: if you are going to make a film whose moral is that mechanical objects can never replace people (or Martians), you should try not to make exactly that mistake.

Based on the illustrated book by “Bloom County’s” Berkeley Breathed, it is the story of Milo (voice of Seth Dusky, movements of Seth Green), who must rescue his mother (voice of Joan Cusack) when she is captured by Martians.

Milo’s mother makes him take out the garbage and sends him to bed after dinner for lying about eating his broccoli. He angrily tells her, “My life would be so much better if I didn’t have a mom at all!” Feeling guilty when he can’t sleep, he gets up to apologize only to see her being carried off in a space ship.

He manages to stow away. All of the females on Mars are busy imposing order and marching around in armor, so the children have to be raised by super-strict “nannybots.” They want to use Milo’s mom and her memories to program the nannybots because their reconnaissance revealed that she did not spoil her son the way some of the other Earth mothers do.

On Mars, Milo meets up with another human, Gribble (voice of Dan Fogler), a pudgy tech-whiz who has been hiding out from the Martians for 25 years and is given to enthusiastic exclamations like “Gribble-tastic!” Milo wants to rescue his mother before sunrise, when the emptying out of her brain will destroy her. At first Gribble wants Milo to stay so he can have a companion beyond the hairy underground creatures who have been the only living beings he has seen. But both Gribble and Milo learn something about the responsibility and joy of taking care of someone else. So the rescue gets underway with help from Gribble’s nuts-and-bolts pet and a rebel solider who intercepted some US transmissions of a silly 60’s sitcom. She thinks being a hippie chick is groovy (Elisabeth Harnois as Ki) and wants to know more about that “crazy love thing.”

This is decidedly second-tier Disney with third-tier visuals. It makes sense to give the Martians a drab color palette to evoke their oppressive environment, but it makes the experience of watching dull as well. The rows of marching female soldiers in armor evoke many other, wittier, images from “Monsters vs. Aliens” to “Metropolis” and Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” video. And there’s something just creepy about imagining a world in which the females are all domineering and robotic and the males are all incompetent and ignorant. The vertiginous 3D effects work all right unless you move your head, causing the edges of the images to splinter. And the script is weak and predictable, even for children.

The biggest problem is what animators refer to as the “uncanny valley,” the feeling of disorientation and unease we get when we see a depiction of a human face that is close but not quite right.

Our brains are naturally wired to recognize and empathize with faces with the merest suggestion of eyes, nose, and mouth. As Pixar and Disney have shown us, we can happily feel affectionate toward fish, cars, mice, dogs sharing spaghetti, and even bugs as well as simplified human-ish faces that are intended to look like plastic, as with Buzz and Woody in the “Toy Story” movies.

“Mars Needs Moms” would have worked much better if the faces of Milo, his mother, and Gribble were more stylized and caricatured. Instead, based on reference dots and computer algorithms, they are at the same time too close and not close enough to make us feel that we are watching our own species. The Martians appear more familiar than the humans, as we are powerfully reminded with the live action shots at the end when it literally comes to life. That makes this movie only Gribble-so-so.

Exclusive Clip: VeggieTales: ‘Twas The Night Before Easter’

Posted on March 10, 2011 at 8:00 am

The VeggieTales folks have a new Easter DVD for families and we have an exclusive sneak peek! And you know what that means — lots of laughs, great songs, and some gentle lessons.

It’s Easter time in Crisper County and cable news reporter Marlee Meade (Petunia Rhubarb) is hunting for a way to help others. On a tip that the old town theater will be shut down, Marlee cooks up a plan to save the stage and make a difference through the power of musical theater. With a cast of costume-clad townies, massive props and a 20-foot robot rabbit – Up With Bunnies is hatched! There’s only one thing missing the star of the show! When news spreads that singing sensation Cassie Cassava (Melinda Doolittle) is arriving to perform in her hometown church’s Easter service, Marlee gets worried. Concerned about the competition, she schemes to steal the starlet for her own pageant! But when things go haywire, will it be curtains for Marlee s dreams or will she discover the true meaning of Easter and what helping others is really all about? Find out in this hare raising adventure!