WAS1 Productions

Originally Written 06/13/05

I watched a movie with some friends tonight. Lonnie had borrowed an artistic/inspirational movie, What the Bleep Do We Know?! from one of her friends, and we watched that after dinner. Production wise I’d give it good marks, but content wise I found it uneven. Mike, Jeff and I all remarked that it was such a college movie. Mike likened it to a college production, which I kind of thought, thought it had much better production values.

I was even reminded of my sophomoric attempts at philosophy and one of the video art pieces I’d made, The Quest, when during the beginning it had a bunch of people’s voices asking questions like “what is reality.” My video was essentially a dialog with myself and the camer man on such subject, so it was a moment of recognition and deja vu.

Jeff also commented that in college we would’ve stayed up half the night discussing it. I remembered those discussions I had with my friends with some fondness. Of course I also felt a little jaded in that the movie didn’t work nearly as well for me now as it would’ve 10-15 years ago. It started out okay, and the discussion of quantum physics was fun, but they were trying to tie it in with metaphysics, philosophy and eastern/new-age religions.

It felt forced and superficial, like someone who’d read a Pyshc 101 text and Stephen Hawking’s book, and was trying to run with it, without understanding it all. Of course they had various learned scientists and philosophers giving bits of narration and lecture. They sounded like they knew their stuff, but it was also edited to try and tell a bigger picture, which didn’t quite fit for me. I admit I was rolling my eyes a lot during the first part of it. I also felt that the filmmaker was elaborating on certain experiments and phenomena, stretching the truth to the point of mythology in a couple of instances.

However, the second half of the movie redeemed itself for me. They stopped trying to use quantum mechanics and started talking about bio-psychology instead. They touched on brain chemistry, neuro transmitters, associative memory and learned patterns of behavior. I liked how they pointed out that by repeating patterns of emotions, you could change your perceptions of the world, for the better or worse, and you could get locked into “addictions” of emotions and keep repeating behaviors over and over.

I liked how it used a good understanding of brain chemistry, perception, mood and cognition to work into philosophy and basic tenets of self-help and determination. There was a segment of some animations of cells getting turned on with various neuro-transmitters and turning into anthropomorphized representations of various emotions, which was very silly, but also worked well to give a fun mood, while showing the point. That was all mixed in with a montage at a wedding party, where people were running the whole gamut of emotions and responses.

Mixed in with the various people giving instructional narration, was a simple story of a woman, a photographer, who was drifting through life as a passive observer. It showed her following the path of dealing with the scars of past pain to finally make steps towards self improvement. I liked how a lot of that narrative was carried out. The denouement at the end of the film ran on too long, and they reverted back to quantum mechanics to try and tie things together, but it just felt more muddled to me.

While I felt the movie was flawed, I also applaud them for doing such a project on intellectual and spiritual experimentation and thought. It was fun to watch, fun to crack jokes at in a few silly places, but also gave pause for some thought.

Originall Written 10/26/04

Went and saw The Grudge tonight.  I also found that Ju-On, the original Japanese horror movie it’s a remake of, is available here on DVD, so it’s added to my NetFlix queue so I can check out the original. Anyway, we were curious about the film, so we ignored the lackluster reviews and checked it out. It wasn’t as good as either version of The Ring or Dark Water, but it was fairly decent. The story was a little more simplistic than those other films, but still interesting. It wasn’t scary, but it managed to generate some good suspense in many places.

The visuals did get kind of over-the-top at times though, which made things a bit unintentionally silly. There were two women sitting off to the side a row ahead of me, who kept on laughing and hurt the mood as well. It’s kind of interesting how the visuals and narrative elements from all these Japanese horror films are very similar, which is sort of becoming a little cliche. It was odd seeing the story still set in Japan, but with all the main characters Americans. They did manage to touch on the feeling of being outsiders in a strange land, which wasn’t part of the original story, but was a nice touch. Roger Ebert complained that the story jumped around too much, but I liked the non-linear story-telling. I thought it added a nice quality to the story and I didn’t find it hard to follow at all. So while the film wasn’t perfect, I pretty much liked it and it was a fun diversion. I am curious to check out the original movie though.

Update 04/20/10

I didn’t like the original Ju-On. It started out okay but just kept going on and on. The director was trying to show the scope of the people the curse had struck, but following it back victim after victim just got tedious. Your mileage may vary of course, but for me I prefer the American remakes to a few of the Japanese horror films.

Originally Written 08/10/04

I went and saw Harold and Kumar go to White Castle tonight. It was a pretty dumb movie, while at the same time being very clever, which I appreciated.

They took the staple of stoner/road movies and ran with it, mixing it up by playing upon racial cliches and even a couple of gender/sexual stereotypes. The racial issues were bit too obvious and they got a little heavy handed with the race card in a couple of spots, but it’s refreshing to see a teen movie with some social commentary.

For the most part the movie was good fun too and except for a a couple of spots that dragged a bit, I found it pretty damn enjoyable. The characters were amusing, and the cameo of Doogie Howser’s Neil Patrick Haris doing a parody of himself was bizarrely humorous.

I knew an indian guy Kumar in college who, while not a stoner, had an entertaining attitude. I think he might be amused by seeing his namesake in this flick.

Originally Written 07/08/2004

M. Night Shyamalan needs to be slapped.

I saw the The Village tonight. To say I hated it is too strong, but I was seriously dissapointed by the film, and I went into it without much expectations. Though I was hoping for more werewolves. This is it, M. Night needs to stop relying on the crutch of trick endings and big surprises. I’ve been growing tired of them, but this one really annoyed me. It was just so trite and mundane.

I didn’t read any big reviews before seeing the film, not wanting to be affected by them, but I did catch one tiny capsule of a review today while looking up the showtimes. The reviewer for Variety I think it was pointed out that his films have made people approach them like their a secret to be cracked, and that changes how you watch them and look at the story. As I said to Paul, you don’t really watch his films, you more observe them, trying to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. That takes out some of the fun of the movie for me, you can’t just be an observer, you have to be a detective.

It’s also sad and annoying that he could write better movies if he didn’t always seem like a one-trick-pony. While some of the dialog in this film was a bit wooden and heavy, that may have been deliberate. I will say he always does a great job with setting, mood and cinemaphotography. So it’s sad when the movie doesn’t live up to its promises or what it could have been.

About twenty minutes into the film I got an idea of how it might end. Then again later on I had the same thought, but hoped it wouldn’t be true. When it was revealed to be what I’d suspected I didn’t even have some dull surprise. I was annoyed to have seen it coming, especially since it was such a trite and silly idea. What’s more, he played his hand too quickly. The ace was shown with about twenty minutes left, which made things kind of anticlimactic. There was another face card which didn’t do much for me and then a joker at the end, but I’d called that too. I leaned over to Paul and suggested it about 5-10 minutes before it was shown. Bleah.

What’s more, not only was the ending so predictably obvious, I found it kind of insulting. I’m tired of how M. Night has to make a big show of how clever and insightful he is. He came off as particularly smug in this one, not just from his forced cameo in this film (I felt his others worked, this one didn’t), but he also looked like he was preaching from an ivory tower. It was so damn heavy-handed and smacked of moral superiority.

What’s more the morality tale was pretty hard to swallow. The film did kind of work as a fable, but even then the metaphors were way to obvious. Again, I can’t say I hated the film, I did like parts of it, and some of the ideas were interesting. I still felt let down and insulted though. I’m also torn on whether or not to recommend this to anyone. I tend to be a movie snob, so other people might really like it and feel I’m too hard on it. I still think it could’ve been a lot better. Still, it’s worth checking out, if not as a rental than as a matinee. As Paul said, the immersion of the darkened theater works much better for the suspense. Though I didn’t think the suspense always worked her. Signs did that much better.

Originally Written 02/11/04

Devil’s Playground is a really interesting documentary about a custom of the Amish. The Amish don’t believe in baptizing infants and think that only an adult can make an informed decision on whether to join the church and follow god. When kids turn 16, they’re released into the outside or “English” world and can basically run free, doing just about anything. Then after a couple of years, they’re expected to come back and get baptized into the church and live in the community and follow the religion for the rest of their lives.

Man, adolescence is hard enough, I couldn’t imagine going through what those kids go through and having to make such a huge decision at that age. Like the preacher’s kid who runs wild when they have a bit of freedom, these kids pretty much went crazy. There’s tons of parties, alcohol, drugs, cable TV and video games. Some kids even moved out of the house to enjoy the freedom.

The documentary was quite well made. It followed a few different kids and showed how things went over the many months. Some of them went back to the church, a couple couldn’t return to that world, and one was still in limbo as he was trying to figure things out. It was a really poignant and somber film. It also gave an interesting look into Amish society and their beliefs, which you normally wouldn’t be able to get.