Movies

Inception: Of Tells And Totems

In Movies on 14 August 2010 with 2 comments

Having finally gone off to see Inception in an actual movie theater, it’s time for some stray, but hopefully coherent, thoughts, all of which will be after the jump if you’re reading this on the front page. If you click through to the rest, or read past this opening paragraph, you risk contaminating your own experience of the movie if you’ve not yet seen it. This is your only warning.

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Firefly Fan Films Redeemed?

In Fandom, Movies on 19 June 2010 with 2 comments

Once upon a time, I ripped a Firefly-inspired web series shot here in Oregon something of a new one. A disaster in almost every conceivable way, I even got yelled at by some people for discussing a version of the episode’s script after the episode itself had been posted for viewing. (The project, however and in fact, then partially fell apart, complete with cast departures, and promised some sort of eventual do over.) All in all, the entire experience left a bad taste in my mouth when it came to Firefly-inspired fan film and video projects.

Which presented something of a problem, because long in the pipeline has been Browncoats: Redemption, a labor of love for both the Firefly universe itself and (since proceeds from the film will go to charities such as Equality Now) for the good works its fans so often can be found doing. Knowing that this project was close to being released into the world, the sour aftertaste of an abysmal Firefly-themed web series was an unnecessary distraction.

Seven cities participating in this milestone fifth year of Can’t Stop the Serenity — global charity screenings of Serenity to benefit Equality Now and other charities — have been given the opportunity to screen a rouch cut of Browncoats: Redemption. Amongst these seven is Portland (where CSTS was founded in 2006), which will screen the film as the first part of its all-day event on Saturday, June 26.

Other cities will get to screen the film’s first twelve minutes. I’ve now seen those minutes, and since I know a number of people in the wake of the Firefly web series debacle have wondered how I will react to Browncoats: Redemption, I felt I should go ahead and react.

Let me dispense with this up front: I did not in any manner come away from these first twelve minutes of Browncoats: Redemption feeling like I did after the aforementioned backbirth of a Firefly web series. At all.

Yes, this is a fan film, and so carries with it things that all fan films, even decently-produced ones, do. Even accounting for the rough cutness of it all, there’s some awkward bits, and some performance stiffness. But that just brings up the important part.

You likely won’t care.

Redemption’s opening pretty deftly doles out the exposition and quickly establishes some basic character energies. And while it might be a bit over-loaded with in-jokes, they’re mostly so funny you’ll just find yourself rolling with it. There’s one entire conversation at the bar in which the film begins that’s total and complete fan service, but it’s such a clever bit of reversal humor that you’ll eat up every syllable of it.

If you consider yourself a Browncoat (and judging by, say, the attendance at Firefly at the Mission back in 2007, many people in this town do), it’s time to stop stalling and get to purchasing a ticket for this year’s Can’t Stop the Serenity event here in Portland.

We’re one of only seven cities awarded the opportunity to see a rough cut this fan film months before it receives its official premiere at Dragon*Con and then is released to the public at large. If the rest of Browncoats: Redemption manages to live up to the fan film promise of its first twelve minutes, you’ll be sorry if you make yourself wait.

Squander Or Masterpiece?

In Movies on 16 January 2010 with Comments Off

Thanks to the Netflix subscription gifted me a month or two back, tonight I finally watched Shane Acker’s 9, and while it’s one of the most visually beautiful films I’ve seen (ragpunk?), I mainly wondered why the story didn’t appear to make any actual sense.

Central to the story is the mysterious talisman, which as near as I can tell serves only two purposes: to wake the machine and grant it the power literally to suck the souls out of the dolls, and to release those souls up to some heavenly hereafter should the correct sequence of buttons be pressed.

Which is all well and good until you really take a look at it, since the second purpose is necessary only if someone is stupid enough to allow the talisman to fulfill the first. And “wake the machine and grant it the power literally to suck the souls out of the dolls” seems a fairly daft thing for anyone to want, so the inescapably problematic question is: why does the talisman exist anymore in the first place?

For that matter, even if it exists, why would the scientist specifically set out to create a race of dolls, each possessed of a portion of his own soul, and then leave behind for the ninth and final doll a device whose first purpose — the resurrection of the machine responsible for destroying humanity — is horrifyingly counterproductive?

I could come up with only one answer: the scientist saw this as his only means of spiritual escape and redemption for the role he played in creating the machines which ended all human life in the first place. But what that means was he was willing to create life in order for that life to die so that the pieces of his soul would be released unto heaven.

What that explanation in turn means, ultimately, is that the scientist suffered from a rather terrifyingly selfish and manipulative sense of his own spiritual needs. One that, no less, would seem to undermine that suggestion that he’s even deserving of any sort of redemption. If so, the story certainly then makes sense, but turns out to be not only almost rampagingly cynical, but almost completely deceptive about being so.

Humanity, the film would then be saying, not only would destroy itself through the creation of and self-interested manipulation of machines, but would then respond to doing so by extending that self-interest and manipulation into the creation of new life whose sole purpose is to be left behind and die in order to set free the soul of the destroyer.

“We had such potential,” the scientist says. “Such promise. But we squandered our gifts.” I’m left to wonder whether this also describes 9 itself, or whether Acker is a mad genius who smuggled into the nation’s movie theaters a near masterpiece of human misanthropy.