Harper’s: The Worst Movie Ever?

Posted on July 31, 2010 at 8:00 am

There are a lot of contenders for the title of Worst Movie Ever. But clearly one of the most popular is the 2003 film, “The Room,” written by, directed by, and starring Tommy Wiseau, now a cult favorite at midnight screenings. Audience members line up to see it, many of them carrying plastic spoons.
Harper’s has a superb piece by Tom Bissell about “The Room,” unfortunately behind a firewall and accessible to subscribers only. But this is worth buying the issue or checking it out at the library because it is not only hilarious and oddly heart-warming in its dissection of the film and its weirdly compelling appeal, it is very sharp about the way that “The Room” mangles the very essence of film narrative from a combination of hubris and incompetence.

tried to make a conventional film and wound up with something so inexplicable and casually surreal that no practicing surrealist could ever convincingly ape its form, except by exact imitation. It is the movie that an alien who has never seen a movie might make after having had movies thoroughly explained to him….Wiseau understands the placement and required tone of certain conventions but not at all their underlying meaning. What makes him interesting is the degree to which his art becomes a fun-house mirror version, an inadvertent exposé, of a traditional film.

What the Well-Dressed Villain Is Wearing

Posted on July 27, 2010 at 3:55 pm

The Daily Beast has a great gallery of villain fashion. Sean Macaulay writes very perceptively about what we learn from the way the bad guys dress.

The key to any great supervillain–and why we secretly like them–is that they are not destroyers, at heart, but creators. They don’t want riches or power, they want to realize a vision. They are arrogant and remote. Their certainty is breathtaking. But there’s no denying their artistry.

Macaulay notes that good guys tend to be conservative. They are about preserving the status quo and playing by the rules. Bad guys want to shake things up. They have vision — yes, evil, destructive vision — but they undeniably want to make some big changes. They want to stand out and make a mark and that is often reflected in their attire. Macaulay admires the stark contrast in the style choices of the two arch-villains and arch-rivals in “Despicable Me.” One is goth-grubby traditional with his gray sweater and striped scarf, his alligator sofa, rhinoceros chair, vehicles made from scrap metal emitting puffs of dark smoke, and beds made from bomb casings. The other is sleek and spotless, everything white and shiny with orange accents.
The accompanying gallery is a bit disappointing, though. Every one of the sartorial examples is male and three out of twelve are James Bond villains. They’ve left off my favorite fashion-forward villains. I’d include The Snow Queen in the Narnia movies, Hannibal Lecter with the face mask to keep him from biting, Jack Nicholson and Heath Ledger as The Joker, the Wicked Witch of the West in “The Wizard of Oz,” Disney villainesses like Ursula in “The Little Mermaid” and Malifacent in “Sleeping Beauty,” Agent Smith in the “Matrix” movies, Alex in “A Clockwork Orange,” Anton Chigurh in “No Country for Old Men,” various Draculas, and the greatest fashion icon villain of them all…..

(more…)

Related Tags:

Understanding Media and Pop Culture

Comic-Con: Etc. and Misc.

Posted on July 26, 2010 at 1:06 am

I saw Gamer Grub, a specially designed “performance” snack for gamers that won’t leave crumbs on the keyboard or make their fingers sticky.

A lot of people were walking around with dripping wounds on their faces. It turned out to be a promotional temporary tattoo from the “Dexter” people. There was real blood, however, at the Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive, an annual tradition at Comic-Con.

Among the highlights of Comic-Con for me each year are the presentations from the Comic Arts Conference, an association of academics who conduct serious scholarly analysis of comics, graphic novels, and sequential art. I truly enjoy their serious, thoughtful engagement and especially their vocabulary, using terms like “meta-panels,” “panopticonism,” “historiographic meta-fiction,” “inexpungable relativity,” “multivocality,” and “ret-con.” And I like to think about the way that comic book stories, carrying the same characters through decades of real time, provide an opportunity for scholars to think about the power and possibilities of endless narratives carried forward by many different people through many different eras.

A group of superheroes took on a group of virulent haters when Comic-Con attendees staged a protest against Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church.

You can buy tribbles at Comic-Con, and these are guaranteed not to reproduce.

One of my favorite promotions this year was for the forthcoming “Skyline,” about a strange light that sucks people up into the sky. They had a truck that launched small, ghostly white “bodies” made of soap bubbles that floated up past a huge sign for the movie.

No staples, no need for Mylar bags, and your mother can’t throw them away — there are now digital comics for you to read on your iPad or computer. But what will happen to all of the meticulous grading and how do you buy and sell vintage digital comics?

At the huge “Tron” session, the film-makers recorded the audience and promised to include their cheers in the movie.

Movie stars like Harrison Ford, Angelina Jolie, Sylvester Stallone, and Robert Downey, Jr. get a big reception from the crowd at Comic-Con. But they also go wild for Janet Waldo, Stan Freberg, and Tom Kenny. If you know who they are and want to hear a funny story told by Janet Waldo, send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com

The biggest announcement of this years Con was the cast for “The Avengers” movie, to be directed by Con favorite, Joss Whedon.

Everything is mutli-platform and omnimedia. TV shows spin off games. Games spin off movies. Both spin off comics and graphic novels and they spin off movies, television shows, and apps. I played Glee karaoke for the Wii and it was a blast.

Most popular questions at the panels: What are the DVD extras? How do I get your job?
You are AWESOME! (Yes, I know that’s not a question, but apparently, some people do not.)

No one really was stabbed here, despite news reports. A guy poked another guy in the face with a pen. Everyone is fine.

I spoke to Neil Kaplan, a voice-over actor (he once voiced Optimus Prime) who has created a non-profit group called Audio Theater for Our Troops. He hopes to build a library of audio materials to send to military forces for entertainment and support.

A guy standing at the microphone to ask a question was wearing a black hood and long cloak. The moderator called on him, “Uh, the next question is from, uh, Death?” The guy in the cloak responded with as much dignity as he could muster: “I am a Sith Lord.”

I was captivated by a book called Boilerplate: History’s Mechanical Marvel and got a chance to speak to the co-author, Anina Bennett. She told me her husband is a graphic designer and history buff who originally wanted to write straightforward historical adventure stories that evolved into a graphic novel and then evolved into a book that took a fictional inventor and his fictional invention, a robot, and put them into real, historical events. “People get turned off by the way history is taught,” she told me. Inspired by Gore Vidal and the Flashman books, the two of them worked together to tell true stories through the adventures of the robot, illustrated with astonishingly authentic-looking historical artifacts. The book is simply gorgeous and very inviting, and there is a brief but excellent teachers guide available. J.J. Abrams has announced he will make the movie.

There are enormous displays on the Exhibition floor, some costing a quarter of a million dollars. We could have our photo taken on the throne of Asgard, in the zombie house from “The Waking Dead,” or lifting a car like the superhero members of “No Ordinary Family.” But what I found most moving and inspiring was the rows of displays from people with their own comics and graphic novels. It isn’t the marketing blitz; it’s the power of imagination and the need to tell stories that is the real energy behind Comic-Con. And I cannot express how impressed I was with the talent, dedication, and professionalism of everyone I spoke to.

Can’t wait for next year!

And yes, there are two more Comic-Con posts coming, one on movies and one on television. Stay tuned. And if you’ve read this far, send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Comic-Con in the subject line. First one will win a Comic-Con souvenir.

How Did Old Spice Get So Cool?

Posted on July 22, 2010 at 3:24 pm

How do you advertise a scent on television? And how do you make a product that was around in your grandfather’s era and has no connection to a celebrity or fashion label seem cool?

You do it with charm, wit, and low-key sales pitch that lets people discover and re-discover it for themselves. Old Spice, once associated with other antiquated brands 60’s medicine cabinet like Ipana, Brylcreem, and Hai Karate, has had a surprising resurgence, starting with a Super-Bowl ad, followed by viral, interactive videos.

Craig Reiss of Entrepreneur.com thinks this is an indicator of very big changes in advertising.

Last week we saw two days that shook the viral marketing world. Old Spice, a long-neglected — if not forgotten — Procter & Gamble brand unleashed a social media blitz that may have changed the rules of social network marketing.

The Super Bowl ad features former NFL player Isaiah Mustafa and it’s theme appears to be addressed to the women in the audience: your man might not look like him, but he can smell like him. Why to women? First, who do men want to smell good for? Second, who actually buys it?

The commercials were appealing, with a light touch.

What really took off happened five months later.

Wieden posted a simple message on Old Spice’s Facebook and Twitter page: “Today could be just like the other 364 days you log into Twitter, or maybe the Old Spice Man shows up @Old Spice.” And show up he did.

As people tweeted questions about manliness to the Old Spice Man, he began posting near-real-time video vignettes responding to the queries, all in character and with no small degree of humor as he stood bare-chested, abdominals front and center in a bathroom set with the creative crew and comedy copywriters of Wieden + Kennedy behind the camera furiously writing jokes and chasing down props.

In a two-day blitz, the team produced more than 180 video “shout-outs,” including a marriage proposal (she accepted) and exchanges with celebrities including Ellen DeGeneres, Demi Moore, Christina Applegate, Alysa Milano, George Stephanopoulos, Olympics speed skater Apolo Ohno, gossip blogger Perez Hilton, tech gadget blog Gizmodo, Stanley Cup champions Chicago Blackhawks and Starbucks (which now has 10 million fans on Facebook).

Instead of spending millions of dollars buying time on the broadcast networks, which recently posted another dispiriting set of eroding viewership numbers, the Old Spice team uploaded them — at no cost — to Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. They quickly got almost 600,000 “likes” on Facebook and seven millions views on YouTube — not people who fast-forward thought an ad as they watch a show on their DVR but people who specifically chose to watch.

Reiss’ shrewd assessment of what works here is well worth reading. In particular, he notes the personalized, interactive, and viral nature of this campaign.

That is at the core of the Old Spice phenomenon. People started competing to be witty or provocative, making their best bets on what would intrigue the Old Spice Man to want to respond to them. Many thousands did not get a response, but it seemed like all of them did. And the ones that didn’t kept trying harder to impress the Man. Also, every blogger or celebrity who did get a response wrote about it. It was a badge of honor.

We can expect many more brands to pick up on this approach — and most of them will find out that it is not easy to be as engaging and innovative as Old Spice, two terms no one would have thought of applying to that brand a few weeks ago. For a trip down memory lane, see below.

After You’ve Seen ‘Inception’ (Spoiler Discussion)

Posted on July 17, 2010 at 4:36 pm

For those who have seen “Inception” and want to hear some other people think it through, listen in to this discussion with Matt Atchity (Editor-In-Chief, Rottentomatoes.com) and Christy Lemire (AP).
And if you want more — check out the Daily Beast’s list of mind-bending movies and Salon’s list of the best onscreen dreams.