posted by Scene -- @ 1:12 AM

“PANIC ROOM” DELIVERS

(originally published April, 2002; MacMedia "LSD" Issue)

David Fincher, will you ever make a bad movie? Oh yeah…Alien 3. But at least that looked cool. David Fincher, will you ever make a movie that doesn’t look cool?

“Panic Room”, the latest effort from director Fincher, follows in the footsteps of his previous work—“The Game”, “Se7en”, and “Fight Club”—as an aesthetically stunning trip into a world of madness, where characters’ senses of possibility and control are ripped out from under them.

The plot, written by screenwriting-vet David Koepp (“Jurassic Park”, “Carlito’s Way”, “Stir of Echoes”—too many to list), involves a woman named Meg Altman (Jodie Foster) and her daughter Sarah (Kristen Stewart). Meg and her daughter move into a posh yet foreboding brownstone, but barely have enough time to acquaint themselves with the house before three criminals break in and try to steal a certain hidden fortune. (The criminals are wonderfully cast with Jared Leto, Forest Whitaker, and, uhm, Dwight Yokum).

Fortunately, the house comes equipped with a “panic room” for Meg and her daughter to hide in—a hidden, impenetrable room encased by steel, and containing a separate phone line, surveillance cameras, first aid supplies, etc. Unfortunately, the “panic room” is also where the hidden fortune is kept, and the thugs won’t stop at anything until they can get into it. Thus begins the movie.

The movie, essentially, is about space. The opening credits are depicted in what is best referred to as 3D (for lack of a better term). The title cards, given the dynamics of space and dimension, seem imposing and menacing. Fincher’s composition also does an admirable job of contrasting the creepy spaciousness of the house (especially Meg’s bedroom) with the suffocating constriction of the panic room. In parts, the agile and tenacious camera darts and slithers through the cracks of the house, travelling between floors and floating through walls, sliding into electrical sockets. Not only does this look really cool (and recall several shots from “Fight Club”), but it also performs the function of defining spatial relations. As the camera moves, we become aware of where everything is located, who is where, and what is directly on top of what, etc.

Appropriately, Foster’s character suffers from claustrophobia. When first introduced to the panic room, she veers on the edge of a fit—the panic room inducing panic rather than suturing it. In the end, when the chaotic, open space of the backyard proves to be Forest Whitaker’s undoing (shut up, you knew the bad guys weren’t going to win), the visual rendering of space and its power is both poetic and potent.

Curiously enough, Meg’s claustrophobia doesn’t provide the narrative fruit you’d expect it to. Small things like this prove irksome in the film. If the characters are rich enough to have small refrigerators in their bedrooms, why don’t they have one in the panic room? And what was up with that 911 call? Nonetheless, if you are willing to accept these small things and lose yourself in the world of the film, you will definitely get your money’s worth. There are parts of the movie that had the audience audibly excited and on the edge of theirs seats. They cheered the hero. I haven’t been to an action movie since God-knows-when where the audience actually cheered out loud for the hero.

In the end, though, that is what “Panic Room” amounts up to: a crowd-pleaser. It is a much lesser work than say, “Fight Club” or even “Se7en”, and does not merit the repeated viewing that those films do. And while it is somewhat disappointing in that respect—Fincher is capable of so much more—the bottom line is still this: “Panic Room” is worth your money. And that, nowadays, is much appreciated

-J.
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posted by Scene -- @ 12:56 PM

“Slow Nerve Action” Funk Up the Bovine Sex Club

(orginally published April, 2002; MacMedia.)

A funk/hiphop (self-described as “porn funk”) band “mostly” from Ontario, but located in Vancouver, Slow Nerve Action contacted MacMedia several times earlier this month to review one of their shows.

And so, on March 28, a large Polish friend of mine and I made our way down to the Bovine Sex Club to check out the band. Turning out to be an amiable bunch, we learned from Benson, the bass player, that they—drummer Mike Luni, keyboardist Ian Lamoni, vocalist Chris Berry, guitarist John Guntier, and the aforementioned and singularly named Benson—met each other while drinking, partying, and skiing, and that they had been together for two years. In the background of the club, loud funk played over the house speakers and scenes from Shaft flickered on monitors over the bar, setting the tone for the night.

Later, the band members slowly made their way on stage. At first they jammed along with the music playing on the house speakers, and then, slowly, their own playing took over, and they dove into their opening number—a pretty cool way to start. After their first song, they introduced themselves, claiming to be our “sex educators” for the night. After asking some audiences members if they knew any jokes, they kicked into their second number, the single, “The Soap of Beautiful Women”.

Noticing a pattern? Sex educators? Porn Funk? Soap and women? Yes well, that pretty much sums up the lyrical content for the night. For a little over an hour, Slow Nerve Action pumped the club full of some mean funk rhythms, all the while singing about “big titties, little titties”, and “vaginavaginavaginavagina”. Midway through, lead singer Berry strapped a dildo to his chin, and skipped around the stage with his trademark leprechaun/Bill Cosby dance moves.

While I wasn’t expecting any Bob Dylan-ish lyrical poetry, the sex shtick wore thin pretty soon. Fortunately, the microphones weren’t of the greatest quality, and so I had a hard time deciphering what Berry was saying half the time. But don’t get me wrong. For all its juvenile tendencies, Slow Nerve Action is a great sounding band. Benson’s basslines were especially head-bobbing, and Berry’s singing was smooth and powerful and his rhymes well delivered and on beat, despite the words coming from his mouth. My favorite song of the night, “Mail Order Bride”, opened with some badass drumming from Luni, leading into a lengthy instrumental. The song came to a pounding climax, then melted away like butter before Berry joined in and blessed the mic with some rhyming.

The band also had some good stage presence. Guitarist Guntier, particularly, seemed to be having the time of his life, playing passionately and with a grin wider than Curtis Lecture Hall “L”. He and Berry seemed to have a good rapport (they were in a band together before SNA), and they played off each other well, laughing at each other’s dance moves and funny faces.

But still, the sex antics continued. Aside from the dildo exploits, Berry spent half the show pinching his nipples and motioning the time-tested “ass-slap” gesture. Even the keyboardist seemed un-amused. I have nothing against humor bands, or against sexual lyrics, but one wishes the band would either get funnier, or get sexier. As it is, they are stuck in some netherworld between the two extremes. A netherworld called 3rd Grade. In their final number (before their encore, of course), Berry lyrically pleaded for the crowd to “rub it, love it, suck it”. Maybe if they let it grow a little first, we will.

-J.

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posted by Scene -- @ 12:41 AM

The Royal Tenenbaums

As I walked from the theatre after a screening of director Wes Anderson’s striking new film, The Royal Tanenbaums, a woman of about thirty, wearing a dark fur coat and matching hat, turned to her friends and said, “I hated it!” My ears perked. “Sure, it had some eccentricities,” she continued, “but I hated it!” Now, a more civil man might have walked away without incident. But me, I dropped a rock on her head.

And thus, in an oddly shaped nutshell, is the problem with Wes Anderson. Director of Bottle Rocket and Rushmore, Anderson’s is a cinema much misunderstood. His films are generally and rightfully categorized as comedies and described as “quirky” or, as the flabbergasted woman from the theatre put it, “eccentric”. But to ascribe the charm of The Royal Tenenbaums (or any of Anderson’s films) to being merely “quirky” is to miss the point entirely.

Mind you, The Royal Tenenbaums is ripe with quirk. The story centers on a family with the ingredients for greatness, but a recipe for disaster. Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman) and his wife Etheline (Anjelica Huston) are parents to a trio of child prodigies who grow up to be a trio of adult losers. Margot Tenenbaum (Gwenyth Paltrow) is a young playwright who grows up to be depressed and missing a finger; Chas Tenenbaum (Ben Stiller) is a stock-market whiz who turns into an angry, repressed, and perpetually sad single dad after his wife is killed; and Richie Tenenbaum (Luke Wilson) is a young tennis champ who loses his marbles during a championship game because his sister (whom he is in love with) has just gotten married.

It is very easy to dismiss the quality of these performances. On the surface, the acting seems to be merely a collection of distinctive ticks and twitches. But if that were true, the film would not be nearly as emotionally involved as it is. Anderson and co-writer Owen Wilson (who also plays neighbor Eli Cash in the movie) have drawn out the characters so deeply that each twitch of an eyebrow is not only enough to cause the audience to laugh out loud, but also enough to well the deepest sense of empathy in the viewer.

The first half of the movie is overwhelmingly laugh-out-loud funny, but when a character slits his/her wrists early in the third act, the act is both shocking and logical. Instead of it killing the mood, you wonder why no one in the movie had attempted suicide earlier. Rarely is comedy this emotionally involved.

Like Rushmore (which, if you haven’t seen it, you should), The Royal Tenenbaums has enough faith in the viewer’s intelligence to not spell out the characters’ emotions in the form of Hollywood style long-winded speeches. Here, tiny fragments of dialogue and miniscule actions convey a lifetime of hurt. When Etheline confides in her daughter Margot that Chas is coming home because he is depressed, Margot replies “How come he gets to do that?” Later, when Etheline kisses her new lover for the first time, they peck each other on the mouth, followed by a tiny peck on Etheline’s cheek. These kisses carry more weight than the average Hollywood tongue-a-thon could ever hope to.

If by the end of the film you do not connect to any of these characters in even the tiniest manner, it is clear that you have been either been thoroughly conditioned by Hollywood’s sledgehammer approach to drama and comedy, or, that you are some sort of zombie and should be shot. And to that lady outside the Cumberland theatre with the fur coat, you should have that checked out. Your zombiness, that is.

Jeff Catapang
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posted by Scene -- @ 12:35 AM

ANOTHER FUCKING ARTICLE ON BRITNEY SPEARS

(Originally published November, 2001; MacMedia "Obscenity" Issue)

After September 11th, people were predicting a shift in the general direction of American culture. Bill Maher, infamous host of Politically Incorrect, pointed out the superfluous disposability of everything we obsessed over pre-attack: Lewinsky-Gate, Elia Gonzales, Eminem, etc. America’s eyes were supposed to be opened, seeing for the first time in awhile what was really important, what was really newsworthy, what we should really be pissed at. To wit, a quote from High Times writer Dan Skye: “Suddenly, there is less trivia in our lives.”

In the world of arts, it was suggested that this could be the beginning of a more conscious American culture. I saw musicians and movie directors on television being asked about the direction their respective art forms would take post-September 11th (and if you missed it, there was just such a roundtable discussion a few weeks ago in Toronto, whose guests included playwright Judith Thompson). My TA for Arts and Ideas commented on how major events in history had changed the direction of the arts, and how she looked forward to seeing how the current direction of the arts and entertainment industry would be changed because of September 11th.

I myself thought that our little section of the world would become more conscious, more driven to be nice to one another, and more driven to create beautifully honest (not to be confused with “pretty”) things in the wake of such destruction. It’s weird how things can seem so much more beautiful after such destruction. To me, a well-made movie seemed all the more sumptuous, a well-turned song lyric all the more awe-inspiring. I believed that this would be the beginning of a more useful and heartfelt cultural discourse. But, of course, we do not control our cultural discourse, and those who do, do not feel with their hearts.

What Our Attention is Drawn To
And then, on November 5th, Britney Spears came to Toronto. Her press conference was aired live on MuchMusic. A certain reporter grilled her about her views on Bush’s retaliation against Afghanistan. Her response was deemed sub-par. The next day, her face was plastered across The Toronto Sun, and newspapers and television programs all ran articles or stories dealing directly with, or commentating on, how stupid Spears was and what a bad role-model she was.

No, my gripe is not with Spears. My gripe is that this was the news for the day. Anthrax paranoia and slaughtered Afghanis aside, the media took time off from their jobs to once again punch Spears in her well-developed gut. How dare she try to attract an older fan base! How dare she act sexy! How dare she not be able to intelligently debate national political issues that literally affect the lives of people all over the world! (Issues that millions of people cannot debate intelligently about anyway.)

Britney Spears is not a politician or a political analyst, and I, for one, don’t want her to be. Britney Spears is not an evil-force warping the minds of children (although maybe her marketing team is). She is a little girl who wanted to sing and dance and entertain, and she is pursuing that dream. Her music may not be your mug of java—fine, write a music review—but she does not deserve to be personally attacked or to be treated like dirt in front of hundreds of people. She is a girl who is pursuing her dreams. I respect that. Britney Spears is not evil. She did not kill any innocent people. Britney Spears being a frickin’ twit is not front-page news.

What We Are Forbidden to See

There is a film by director Catherine Breillat that you will never be able to see, and it is called Fat Girl. On Monday, November 19, the Ontario Film Review Board banned it due to its sexual content. On Tuesday that same week, the film’s distributors made an appeal to the board, supported by letters from film critics nationwide and filmmakers such as Atom Egoyan and David Cronenberg, who saw the film as artistic and honest in its sexual content. The Film Board agreed to take another look. On Wednesday, the film was banned without further appeal.

Now, I am not going to espouse the worthiness of film I have never seen (which is the same as denouncing a film you have never seen—which is what many media people and politicians do), but I will comment on my right to see it. Consenting adult consumers have the right to decide for themselves what they find obscene (I’m sure there are exceptions and objections, but that is a whole other article).

As for impressionable young kids seeing the movie, I doubt any children have or ever will have the desire to sneak into an art-house movie named Fat Girl. And if little girls are really being psychologically damaged by Britney Spears’ unattainable hotness, or her flamboyant sexual imagery, then from what I hear, this is the movie for them to see.

What I’ve Decided
The true obscenity of our culture is not the swearing, violence, or sex in our movies or music. It is the mainstream media’s vulgar tendency to promote it or censor it as they see fit, to exploit it for monetary or political gain, to give it newsworthy-significance, and worst of all, to then condemn those behind it for warping our minds. The only warping of our minds that I see happening is coming from the mainstream media conglomerates, controlling the flow of information, shaping opinions and facts and withholding information. I thought things were different. I guess I was wrong.

J.
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posted by Scene -- @ 11:58 PM

My writings on film and culture. I will be posting a lot of my old stuff on as well, in case you are wondering why everything looks old and out-of-date. Most are previous MacMedia articles.

-J.