3/02/2003 - Entry #66
Sorry, this update's a bit later than I intended. Turns out after I went to bed at 9am, I didn't get out of bed until 2am the following morning. Cos I like my sleep.
In the four or so days since the last update, I've thought of dozens of things to talk about, and now I've completely forgotten them all. I know I was going to talk about Avalon. So I'll do that now.
Right, if you ever get the chance to see the film Avalon, do your utmost to avoid it. Even if you have to kill your family. Because really, this is such an awful film I'm left wondering what was going through Mamoru Oshii's head when he made it. For those who don't know who Mamoru Oshii is (most of you, I'd imagine), he's one of the most famous Japanese anime directors. He directed Ghost In The Shell, which is often called one of the best examples of the genre, at least by westerners. He also wrote the script for Jin-Roh, which is in my essentials list, and is one of my favourite films. He even directed the legendary Urusei Yatsura, which depicted destructive aliens as fit women in bikinis. Hurrah! But sadly he seems to have gone completely and utterly fucking insane, because Avalon really is dire. In case you're intrinsically opposed to anime, don't worry, this is actually a live-action film. But it's still shit. The basic story is of a woman who plays a virtual reality game called Avalon, which is so realistic and lifelike that, yes, you guessed it, she ends up questioning what is and isn't real! *gasp*! You mean....what we take for granted might not actually be all there is?! Surely not! My god, quickly, Mamoru, you must tell the people!
Seriously, this film doesn't bring a single god damn thing to the table. It wouldn't even bring anything new to the kid's table, where they have sausages, beans and coke. It's all just so obvious. I've frequently stressed my hatred of The Matrix for constructing itself around such a simple idea, and then wrapping it up in excess 'cool'. Well, Avalon does exactly the same thing, but with an even simpler idea, and virtually no trace of 'cool' at all. It plods along at such a ridiculously slow pace it's not even the least bit amusing. As I've said in the guestbook, I thought The Two Towers was an inexorably slow movie, but it positively whipped by compared to Avalon. Seriously, I could sum up the plot in three important steps. Three events to encapsulate 2 hours of film. I wouldn't mind if they'd spaced the important stuff out with something decent. But it's genuinely just like they took a late-night channel 4 short film and stretched it out for 2 hours. It went nowhere. After about 10 minutes, we're treated to a drawn out shot of the lead character standing on a bus, with several people all stood motionless on the same bus. The shot is held for about 40 seconds before moving on. About 20 minutes later, we get the exact same shot again, with everyone stood in the exact same places. Later on she gets on a train, and everyone is sitting motionless. This time the shot holds for what seems like well over a minute before finally breaking. Okay, we fucking get the idea. Speed it up a little bit, yeah? I mean, you know me, I'm not at all averse to a little slow filmmaking. I loved The Warrior, and The Straight Story, and Das Boot. None of them are exactly action-thrillers. I'm not some 13 year old kid hoping for the next Saving Private Ryan or something. But man, Avalon really dragged. Since the one and only hypothetical it posed was "Maybe the world around you is virtual reality", it really could have used some light dressing up. I'm not criticising the concept of solipsism or existentialism, because I'm a big fan of both. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a brilliant book, and really deals with very similar ideas of reality and 'dreamscapes'. The problem here lies in the fact that whereas Palmer Eldritch takes those ideas and then confounds your expectations time and time again, finally taking the concepts on a tangential ride through religion and the human condition, Avalon simply asks the question and then rolls the credits proudly exclaiming "My work here is done."
To again mention The Matrix, my other main criticism, other than the simplicity of the concept, was the seemingly unquestioning praise that was lavished on it. So it'd be simply unfair of me to like Avalon, given the horrendous compliments I've seen bestowed on it. I'll take Jasper Sharp's review as an example:
"Shot on location in Poland in digitally manipulated monochrome, Oshii's computer-enhanced reality looks like nothing I've ever seen before and represents a groundbreaking diversion for future filmmaking."
Jasper, Jasper, Jasper. Have you never seen an old photograph before? Or anything in sepia monotone? Because really, that's all Avalon is. The game itself is all in sepia monotone, and the outside world is just unsaturated colours. The 'real world', if it can be called that, is simply brightly lit and filmed in saturated colours. It's the most simplistic approach to colour I could possibly envisage. I mean, seriously, what did you expect? For the makers of the film to sit around and think "Hmm, I wonder how we can make this fake world look dark and dingy and miserable...Hey! I know, let's have big neon signs saying 'THIS IS GLOOMY AND DANK!' My fucking god, I'm such a genius" or something? Sucking the colour out of something is the absolute most obvious approach to mood in film possible. Even I've done that, Jasper, and I'm just a clichéd student. It's a very effective technique, don't get me wrong. But it's not at all original, let alone groundbreaking. I'm tempted to give the film some kudos for the fact that even I noticed certain scenes had a lot more colour than others, and I'm sure this signified the lead character's distance from the game, as if the colour was bleeding out of the world the longer she was in the game. But I'm going to need a director's commentary to confirm that, and to prove I'm not just assigning meaning where none exists in a bid to convince myself it wasn't such an empty pile of shit as I think it was. I'll get back to you on that. I'm happy to accept if I'm wrong, though, as I tend to quite like the use of subtle colour. The scene in Requiem For A Dream, for example, where Ellen Burstyn tells Jared Leto about the gameshow and the pills, and slowly through the course of the sequence the camera pans around as the lighting gets darker and darker and darker. Also, despite not having seen the director's commentary myself yet, Mal tells me that American Beauty carefully selects the colours that are and aren't on-screen in each shot, to maximise their effect when they're finally used. Colour can work well, and if I'm right about Avalon's colour=reality thing, then fair enough. But either way, it's still no more or less groundbreaking than a handful of other films I could mention. And just did.
"Oshii's onscreen rendition of the advanced gameworld is nothing short of stunning. Tanks roll across open plains as the players hide out in ruined buildings assailed by helicopters and heavy duty artillery fire."
Again, let's get this straight. Oshii's onscreen rendition of the advanced gameworld is nothing short of Poland. A field in Poland to be precise. A field in Poland with a Polish tank and a Polish helicopter in it. All shot in sepia monotone. It's as far from "stunning" as my buttocks, Jasper. I always hate to apply 'insider' knowledge to films, because it seems so cynical. Like when you watch a film with a computer programmer or something, and he says "Pff. That program would never work. It'd take at least three hours to perform all the necessary computations. This is ridiculous." It's unecessarily close-minded. But really, in this case, Avalon deserves it. If I were to play a game that was as shit as Avalon, I'd probably lose all hope in the industry. It's the most boring game ever. There's about two tanks in the whole level, and one helicopter, which doesn't fire back. Nobody ever shoots at the heroes, instead just standing around and being killed. It's just...I don't get it. It's rubbish! I honestly can't understand what the intention was, because it's so ridiculously un-actionpacked I can't believe it. The only decent thing about the whole sequence is that when people die, they split into several 2D planes. Like, when a tank blows up, the explosion pauses, and the camera pans round to reveal that it's three two-dimensional flat planes at the right distance apart to look like flame. That, I'll admit, was quite cool. I'm being fair, you see. Credit where it's due. But that's the only half-decent aspect of the entire gameworld. The rest is confusingly sparse and dull. And believe me, it's anything but "stunning." I can understand people using that word to describe, say, City of Lost Children, or Waking Life. But not this.
"Avalon is an undeniably outstanding accomplishment. Its mindblowing visuals and operatic score (courtesy of Kenji Kawai, composer of Ghost In The Shell and the first two Ring films) will leave you bowled over."
Right. For the outstanding visuals, see the previous two paragraphs. My mind was well and truly intact by the end of this film. For the score, it's nothing special. Sorry, but it isn't. Now, I love the Ring films. Again, they're up in my essential list. One of the best and most apt aspects of that whole trilogy is the use of sound. The screeching, high-pitched wail of the video is unsettling and genuinely frightening. In the opening scene of the Ring 2, when a mortician wheels an operating table into a room, the barely-perceptable staccato screeching of the wheels is an almost exact replica of the drone from the video, and without even noticing it, you're pulled into the suspense of the scene. Great technique used to excellent effect. Avalon had nothing like that. The musical score never once leapt out at me and struck me as beautiful. Angelo Badalamenti's work frequently does that. Ditto Jerry Goldsmith. Peter Thomas' scores stand up as exceptionally brilliant pieces of music on their own, even without the on-screen visuals. Clint Mansell's scores are also exceptionally good as standalone pieces. Comparatively, Kawai's score for Avalon is pretty insipid, to be honest. Especially since the title theme is deliberately singled out to take centre-stage when it's performed at and opera concert. You'd think it'd be a brilliant song, but it isn't. Yet people seem to laud it as beauty personified. I just don't get it. Then again, I've heard people express lofty admiration for the score to the computer game Halo before, so maybe there's your explanation.
Basically, this film is disgusting, and I really don't recommend it. Though I'm genuinely intrigued to know what everyone else thinks of it. It seems like opinion is well and truly divided. Rich said it was alright, and Steve said it was "really good." My opinion is still that it's the most infuriating film I've seen in a long, long time.
Incidentally, I've just found out that Fukasaku Kinji, the director of Battle Royale, yet another film in my essentials list, died last month. He was 72 years old, and announced last year that he was going to make a sequel to Battle Royale. In the same speech, he revealed that he had an advanced case of cancer, but was going to forego any treatment whatsoever in the hope that he could complete the film before he died. Normally I respond to celebrity deaths with little more than a shrug, even the ones that I liked. But I'm a little sad about this. He was Japan's most consistently successful director. It's a shame. His son has taken over the film, and it's going ahead under his control.
Oh well.
You know that snow I was talking about many days ago? It's still here. I haven't noticed it snow at all since that day, but it's just so cold the snow isn't going anywhere. The whole of Middlesbrough is just perpetually stuck in this freezeframe (no pun intended) of winter. It's great.
I know how much most of you hate me talking about football, but this is one time I really should. The Leeds United team, as the footy fans will have noticed, is falling apart. So far this season we've sold Rio Ferdinand, Jonathan Woodgate, Olivier Dacourt, Lee Bowyer, Robbie Keane and Robbie Fowler. Some of our biggest and brightest stars gone for a total of £55 million. The sale of Robbie Fowler and Jonathan Woodgate are probably the two most crushing blows. Wooders because he, along with Alan Smith, was the jewel in our crown for so many years. A player with so much potential and skill that you were unshiftingly proud of him. He seemed to embody the Leeds team in a way not many players can. I'm absolutely devastated that he's gone, and can't really work out a way to forgive Peter Ridsdale and the board of directors. I think most fans are really starting to side with Terry Venables now, as well. They're beginning to realise that it isn't his fault at all, and that he was conned just like the rest of us were. I really don't know where to begin. It's just soul-destroying. My brother went to the game the other day, and someone had put a "For Sale" sign around the statue of Billy Bremner outside the stadium. I think we're all just utterly fed up.
And Robbie Fowler, I'm gutted to see go, because he was just such a loveable player. At Man City, he's probably going to be absolutely devastating. A regular partnership between Robbie Fowler and Nicholas Anelka? That pairing ought to be scoring goals like nobody's business. Especially since Anelka is such a good provider of goals, and Robbie Fowler is easily the best finisher in the entire world of football. Backed up by Eyal Berkovic and Marc-Vivien Foe, I reckon Man City are going to be absolutely terrorising defences from now on. *Sigh*. I'm personally gonna miss you, Robbie. A lot.
Top Ten Robbie Fowler moments:
10. Responding to the taunts of the Everton fans that he had an escalating cocaine-addiction by getting down on all fours and pretending to snort the sideline after scoring the winning goal against them. The situation was made even more hilarious by the statement from Steven Gerrard that he was just "pretending to be a cow eating grass." The FA didn't quite believe him, and issued a four match ban.
9. Trashing the room of England Under-21 colleague Trevor Sinclair "for a laugh".
8. Getting himself arrested two days after joining Leeds when a photographer attempted to take pictures of him while he was drunk and asleep, clad in military uniform and holding a replica gun while at the Christmas party. Rumours have it that he had to be persuaded not to go as "the gimp from Pulp Fiction."
7. Lifting his shirt to reveal a t-shirt displaying the words ‘Support The 500 Sacked Dockers’ during a UEFA Cup tie - earning the respect of the working classes and a £1,000 fine from UEFA.
6. Cutting up a pair of Neil Ruddock’s £300 Gucci shoes after being told that the hard man had urinated in his shoes. Ruddock punched him in the nose in a crowded airport and it turned out that Steve Harkness was the peeing prankster anyway.
5. Showing genuinely respectable sportsmanship by pleading with the referee not to punish David Seaman when he was adjudged to have been brought down by the Arsenal keeper in the box at Highbury. The referre ignored him and awarded the penalty, so Fowler gently side-footed the ball to make an incredibly easy save for Seaman, thus winning himself many fans. Unfortunately Jason McAteer had no such reservations, and banged in the rebound from a yard out, sprinting 30 yards with his arms aloft in celebration. Fowler got a commendation from FIFA for his actions. McAteer did not.
4. Maturely reacting to a running battle with Graeme Le Saux by leaning over in front of the Chelsea defender and parting his arse cheeks in reference to Le Saux’s alleged homosexuality, before waggling his buttocks in the Chelsea player's direction for much longer than you'd really think was possible during a Premiership match. His japes cost him a two-match ban.
3. When asked in a Loaded magazine interview about his chat-up techniques, revealed that his favourite was: "Do you like jewels? You should suck my dick - it’s a gem."
2. Scoring five goals on his home debut - in the 5-0 League Cup win over Fulham in 1993. Pretty fucking impressive.
1. Scoring a hat-trick in just four minutes and 32 seconds against Arsenal in 1994, showing he really is the best finisher in the game.
So long, Robbie. Please don't score too many against us. We really don't deserve that.
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