AN AFRICAN ELECTION

AN AFRICAN ELECTION is a fascinating documentary about the 2008 presidential election in Ghana.

It's always interesting to see a foreign culture, but this film in particular shows a few things that we Americans take for granted. These people line up at 4AM to stand in line for 10 hours in the hot sun just to cast their vote. And when they finish, they don't go home, they stay there to watch the votes get counted, as the crowd chants the count along with the election commission.

That's a far cry from the Republican presidential primary this week in Colorado, where turnout was less that 10%, even though you could mail in the ballot.

It's very heartening to see a country where people truly believe in their government and take an active role in it. Even some of the people who appear uneducated have strong opinions about how government exists to provide health, education and food to the people.

It turns out that the contest is indeed contested, and there are plenty of parallels to the American election of 2000. I highly recommend this doc.

Sibelius at the CSO

Nineteen year-old violinist Caroline Goulding gave an amazing performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto to an appreciative audience last Saturday at Beottcher Hall with the Colorado Symphony. Alas the previous night had a rare cancellation due to the foot of snow that fell that day. It's a shame, this young lady has a huge future ahead of her and I'm sure the crowd would have loved to hear her. I hope she gets the chance to return to Colorado soon!

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (Pirates 4) was not a film I looked forward to seeing.

After less than stellar outing with Pirates 2 (reviewed here) and Pirates 3 (reviewed here), I had given up on the series. But for awards consideration I need to watch a lot of films, and this was one of them.

I have to say it was a pleasant surprise. It did not take itself too seriously, and it was a complete departure from the last film, bringing back Penélope Cruz as the love interest, and introducing Rob Marshall as director. The film did not overstay its welcome, either, like the last entry, which was almost unwatchably long.

Supposedly Johnny Depp took a lot more control over this film, including finding the source material that was adapted. It worked. Although the film was considered a letdown in the US (not sure how $240M is a letdown), the film made over a billion dollars worldwide, so it's likely we will see a Pirates 5. I can only hope they find equally interesting material.

HANNA

HANNA is a film I wanted to like. It started off promisingly, with a young girl raised in the woods trained as a survivalist. The first forty minutes or so are quite engaging, as we get a fantastic performance by Irish newcomer Saoirse Ronan, who at age 17 steals to movie completely.

Unfortunately once she decides to go to the big city, it becomes just another dumb action film, full of huge leaps of faith that I was unable to make. The rest of the casting is terrible. Eric Banna is completely unbelievable as a CIA assassin, and the film grinds to a halt whenever he returns to it. Even Cate Blanchett is terrible as the CIA (or whatever) chief who must find them both.

It's too bad, the film had promise, and the sound design was excellent.

Battle of Warsaw 1920

Battle of Warsaw 1920 is a fantastic Polish film about the Polish war after the completion of WWI left the country independent. The film looks and sounds fantastic, and the main characters create an involving love story as the backdrop to the war. The lead actress is exceptional, she goes from cabaret singer to nurse to manning a machine gun over the course of the film, and makes it completely believable.

The only problem with the film is that to Americans who know nothing of this era, it is quite confusing. It's hard to tell who is Polish and who is Russian if you are not paying attention. But I do strongly recommend this film if you get a chance to see it. Apparently it's the first Polish film shot in 3D, although I saw it in 2D, the battle scenes probably look stunning with the added depth.

DRIVE

I can see why DRIVE was essentially overlooked by the academy (although the Sound Editing nomination was very well deserved!).

The first half of the film is very involving. There is very little dialogue, yet a lot of tension. Ryan Gosling gives an intense but internal performance as a driver for both the movies and for robberies. But halfway through the film, it completely falls apart. The one thing that made me interested in this character was his relationship with his neighbor and her daughter.

SPOILER!

Halfway through, the film stops being an interesting character study and becomes just another dumb, violent Hollywood heist film. When he brutally kills a pursuer in front of his neighbor, who is the only other interesting character in the film, he essentially kills his relationship with her and writes her out of the movie. (We never see her son again, who was supposedly the motivating factor for everything that happens in the film.)

It's odd, since the first half of the film is so well-written, it's like another writer took over halfway through and started making up dumb dialog to put into Albert Brooks' and Ron Perlman's mouths. Yes, they both do a good job with what they have, but Brooks is nowhere near Oscar-worthy in the film. Gosling is, he gives a layered performance, but I think the only thing good about Brooks is that his character is so different from anything else he ever played that people were shocked he has range.

But the film did sound fantastic!

TREE OF DEATH

TREE OF LIFE made me feel like I just sat through an all-day screening of 310s.  What a colossal, pretentious POS. I can't believe someone green-lighted a film where they said "we are going to inter-cut the creation of the universe with some mundane guy's life."

"And then we are going to butcher famous classical works by editing them to this picture.

I was shocked to realize it was only 2:20. It felt like the longest three and a half hours of my life. Yet it was nowhere near that long.

Yet I do feel the need to shout out to the sound crew. It did indeed sound (and look) spectacular. What a huge waste of resources.

ROCK 'EM SOCK 'EM

Yesterday I watched two movies featuring fighting robots.

TRANSFORMERS 3

and

REAL STEELE.

I would really never like to see a movie about fighting robots again.

Although to be honest, both films were better than I expected. TRANSFORMERS was much better than the last film, mostly thanks to the action sequences. Unfortunately there's a lot more movie than just stuff blowing up. Nice work on the sound by many of my friends including former USC student Erik Aadahl, who was Supervising Sound Editor.

REAL STEELE is truly the Rock 'em Sock 'em come to life. It's an incredibly stupid concept salvaged by good acting and a surprisingly good script. Also the sound design was amazing in every scene.

Neither of these films are films I would normally recommend, but for students of film sound, these are both worth seeing in a good screening environment.

RANGO, PUSS, in BOOTS, and CARS, too!

RANGO is a strange but enjoyable animated film. It is not a perfect script, especially in the first act, but once it gets moving in the second act it really gels. The voice casting is exceptional, and if you are a fan of film, you will enjoy all the allusions to famous movies, most noticeably the Sergio Leone films I love so much, and CHINATOWN. And a few others thrown in.

Also a shout-out to my former student Addison Teague who was the Supervising Sound Editor, the sound design was spectacular. As was the animation.

Over the last three days I have watched eight movies. That's what happens at awards time. I will try to review most of them, but I make no guarantees. Last night one of the ones I watched was PUSS IN BOOTS.

Although there was a lot to enjoy, there was also a lot to snooze through. I think the major problem is that although this is a funny (and well cast) character, he is essentially a second-banana, and his character (and this story) is not enough to flesh out a feature film. When the film is good, it's very good, but the back-story flashbacks were terrible. Ans the ancillary characters were terrible. Humpty Dumpty was terribly conceived, and Jack and Jill were completely wasted. It's an interesting study in contrasts with RANGO, which stands up much better.

I am one of the few people who will publicly admit to disliking CARS. (Click to see my review of the original.)

I don't get it. I *love* the other Pixar films, like TOY STORY, which reminded me of my own imaginative childhood where I gave all my toys personalities. Except the cars. Cars are cars. YOU drive them. They don't have a personality of their own.

The sequel is a colossal misfire. Like Puss, Tow Mater is not a lead character. I guess I can understand the desire to dumb things down for the NASCAR audience, but it sure didn't work for me. 

RISE of the PLANET OF THE APES

RISE of the PLANET OF THE APES was a complete surprise to me.

I so detested the Tim Burton film that I could not bring myself to watch another talking monkey film until I had to. As it turned out, they don't talk until the end, and even then, only a few syllables.

This is one of the best-written films of the year. Like WAR HORSE, the animals carry this movie, and for long stretches at a time, it is pure visual storytelling with no dialogue. The visual effects are astoundingly good and almost invisible except for the fact that I know they could not possibly have trained apes to do most of what they do in the film. The animal performances are amazing. Andy Serkis probably did deserve an Oscar nomination for his unique work in the film, but I doubt most Oscar voters saw the film or understood that the basis of Cesar's performance was a human actor.

If you avoided this film. I would recommend you see it. One of the best films of the year. And outstanding sound work by my good friend Chuck Michael!

WAR HORSE

WAR HORSE is the best John Ford film that John Ford never made.

There's a lot to like in the film, especially if you are an animal lover. The animals are the best actors in the movie. All the tech categories are astounding, most notably the cinematography, score and sound design. But the film runs too long. (Who the hell decided movies should be tow and half hours long?) And the film plods badly when it's about the humans. Stick to the horses in a horse movie. The people's characters are as thin as the paper they were written on.

But the love of the horse overcomes the blasé humans, and makes the film watchable. Yes, it's formulaic, but most of the formula works, even John Williams' heavy handed score. If you can watch this film without a handkerchief, you are not a human being.

THE GIRL and her DRAGON ASS

THE GIRL and her DRAGON ASS are featured well in the film THE GIRL WITH  THE DRAGON TATTOO, the American remake of the original film.

I have to say I was very pleasantly surprised by this version. I liked the original quite a bit, and feared a remake, thinking there was no reason to do it. Yet this film is a better made movie in every way, including the casting of almost every part, but the American version does have one fatal flaw; the explicit violence of the original is much more affecting.

The narrative in this film is much better, as is the visual design (although typically for Fincher, I had problems with both the light and the dialogue levels being too low). However the sound design was outstanding, and the music was surprisingly affective as well.

My major hope when I heard they were doing American versions was that they would make the sequels better than the comparatively weak originals. (Full disclosure, I have not read any of the books.) I still have that hope, and now it's even higher. Unfortunately since this film did not do well in the US, there's a chance there may be no sequels.

THE INTERRUPTERS

THE INTERRUPTERS is an excellent but difficult-to-watch documentary about violence on the streets of Chicago, and, more importantly, a group of individuals who have chosen to intervene on behalf of non-violence.

Like any good documentary, I learned a lot from this film. First off I had no idea just how bad Chicago's violence has become. It's stunning. But even more interestingly, it's amazing to me that these Interrupters literally walk into armed fights in the streets and try to stop them, and with an amazing degree of success. There are a number of interesting characters in the film, but it does have one flaw. It runs too long. A good half hour could have been cut out and included as bonus material. I think they felt the need to follow too many characters too closely. At some point the violence and emotion stop getting the desired reaction because it's just to much for an audience to swallow in one sitting.

But I still highly recommend the film.

A BETTER LIFE

A BETTER LIFE is a great little indie film about how difficult life is for immigrants in Los Angeles. Many of us who spend time in Los Angeles are surrounded by people like the characters in this story, the people who mow the lawns, wash the dishes, and clean our homes, but we never really see how they lead their lives. I spent my first 3 years in Los Angeles living near USC amongst people like this but never really got to know any of them.

Yet their story is universal, as it was when my grandparents moved to this country almost 100 years ago. They came here looking for one thing, a better life for their children. I can't imagine how difficult it is to give up everything you have and know to go to a strange country where you don't even speak the language. But that's what my grandparents did. As Polish (and Irish) immigrants, they were the bottom caste at the time that they moved here. Since then, whatever the latest round of immigration brings has always found its way to the bottom. In Los Angeles, that would be the Mexican immigrants.

The main characters in the film are very good. If there's any criticism, it's that the film is a little slow and simple, almost predictable, as they encounter all of the problems one would expect for illegal immigrants. The saving grace is the acting; the performances are extraordinary, and could quite possibly create Oscar nominations.

I highly recommend this film, especially to Angelinos.

NAMM

NAMM is always a blast. I get to see a ton of new music products, especially technologies, and hear some good bands. This year I also got to go to the TEC awards.

It was a lot of fun but there was not any new product that really blew me away. But I will be back next year!

SUPER, 8!

SUPER 8 is a super film. I was very pleasantly surprised. On seeing the trailer, I had thought, "I lived through the 70s, I've seen this all before," but watching the actual film was a much more enjoyable experience than I had expected. Although I think it helped that my wife and I played a drinking game that each time there was a lens flare, we had to sip some wine.

It's as though someone took the best of Spielberg's early films and put them in a blender (Close Encounters, ET, and a little bit of Jaws) and then added Alien for taste. The film has a great cast of young'uns, especially the Elle Fanning, who could easily be be nominated for Supporting Actress for two of her scenes. (It's awfully hard for someone that young to be aware enough to give a performance that has three layers at the same time.

I was afraid that the self-reflexive nature of the film would get in the way, but the movie-within-the-movie was not at all a distraction, although the child director seemed to have been discarded as a main character halfway through.

Kyle Chandler is a little goofy (his part is not very well written). And there are a lot of "refrigerator moments" as Hitchcock used to say, where later that night you think about plot points that don't make sense, but in the flow of the movie they are fine.

Definitely worth a rental if you have not seen it yet.

Aspen Music Festival Jobs

CES 2012

CES 2012 (the Consumer Electronics Show) for 2012 was a little bit of a letdown. Granted I was there for the last day (like last year) but it did not seem as busy or well-attended as usual, and the technologies present did not seem to be game-changers. Probably the biggest thing covered in the media was the influx of Netbooks, which are really not a new idea, along with thinner flat-screen TVs, and 3D viewing systems. Perhaps the only new thing was 3D printing, which is still in its infancy and is probably not really ever going to take off to mainstream users anyway.

But Vegas is also fun.

HUGO

HUGO is one of the best films I have seen in a long, long time. It is everything THE ARTIST wanted to be but failed upon. This film has rich characters, complex situations, and visual and aural beauty. It has a great original score by Howard Shore, and fantastic sound work by Tom Fleischman.

The film is truly an homage to the great films of yesteryear. The visual beauty is the culmination of a lot of different work: Cinematography, set design, costume, and visual effects. It is truly moving. The cast is excellent, particularly, the kids.

I saw the film in 2D because my wife and I both hate 3D. I cannot imagine how putting this film in 3D could make it any better. The cinematography implied plenty of depth without the need for headache-inducing gimmickry.

I highly recommend the film to everyone.