Man, Inception.

I can’t stop noodling it.

Now, to be clear, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS.

Like, for real.

Really real.

Like, we’re gonna spoil the whole goddamn ending of the movie.

I’m not kidding.

3…

2…

1…

You had your chance.

I had reservations about the ending to Inception. The ending, as you know if you watched the movie, loosely appears to show a world where Cobb’s plan was successful (after much agita and complication), and where he is once more allowed back into the country and back home and finally allowed to be with his children. We think, okay, is this a happy ending, or is it something else? And then Cobb puts his totem — the spinning top — down on the table and it spins and spins and spins and and we hear “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey playing and then, and then, and then –

Credits.

And maybe I’m mixing this up with the Sopranos a little. Shut up. It’s an apt comparison.

The reservations for me orbit the notion of storyteller ambiguity. That level of ambiguity is interesting because it gets people talking, but as a storyteller I don’t have a lot of respect for it. You’re telling me a story, so tell it. Don’t wuss out. Put your balls on the table. A story’s ending is everything, and by failing to commit to an ending — and further by failing to commit in a big way, given that the ending of Inception allows for the dramatic pendulum swing that crosses realities and perceptions — a storyteller is more or less giving a half-hearted shrug. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? You decide, he says, and then takes a nap and fouls his pants.

Inception’s ending isn’t merely a question of little details that could go either way. That’s a functional ambiguity. But here we’re left with a huge dichotomy — “It’s a dream” or “It’s reality” — and it ends up being spectacularly jarring. For me, at least. It feels like a cheat. And shows a lack of confidence.

Except, something nagged at me.

Nolan isn’t a storyteller lacking confidence.

Plus, you look back at the Sopranos finale, even though that was wildly ambiguous, Chase still had an ending in mind.

And so it occurred to me: Nolan must have an ending in mind, too. Somewhere in that ending is the answer — a declaration of intent. Films are a visual medium so I thought, okay, look back over the visuals and what do we see? The top is for most people the easiest and most forthright clue, and herein I think Nolan learned something from The Prestige –

The spinning top is an artifact of misdirection.

We’re going to focus so much on the top that it’s hard to see everything else.

Like a magician, Nolan wants you to focus on this while he performs his trick.

Look past the misdirection…

And then, duh, boom, splurch, there it is –

The kids.

Look past the top and you see the kids, and if you see the kids you see that they’re the same age they’ve been in every dream he was having. They’re the same age from his memory. They’re wearing the same clothes. They’re part of the dream: where before the dream-kids would not turn their heads to see, now their heads have turned. They see their father. His life continues. He may now grow old, and without regret.

He’s still in the dream. He’s still in Limbo.

Maybe he always was. Or maybe he just didn’t come out of it when he met Saito.

I don’t yet know. That’s the fascinating thing. Finding one answer doesn’t put all the other answers in line. Each answer asks two more questions. That’s great — this infinite lemniscate ever turning, ever looping back, is like the Escher print that are the dreams within the film (or the film itself), a weirdly recursive story that has thematic ties to The Prestige and Memento. And once more, I think Nolan is a confident storyteller, and I think contained within this film are answers. It’s a puzzle, and it challenges us to solve it.

I’d originally thought too that the “it’s a dream” ending (i.e. top doesn’t fall) means it’s also what you would consider to be the “negative” ending — but I don’t know that to be the case. We still have a sense of reconciliation: he has put his wife to rest, he can now see the faces of his children, he is moving beyond regret, and (if you believe that the rest of the film is “real”) he helps negotiate Fischer’s troubled past and offers him a feeling of reconciliation (though that inception is a deception).

I’m more and more fascinated by this.

I need to see it again, I think.

I’m also left to wonder what is the deal with that phrase that’s oft-repeated through the film: grow old with no regrets. And Ariadne in Greek myth is not a maze builder, is she? But a maze solver? She helps Theseus through the Cretan maze, right? To defeat the Minotaur? Is she even real? Is she part of Cobb? A segmented piece — he can no longer make mazes, but a part of him still can? Or is she real, a person hired by the grandfather to perform “inception” on Cobb? Is this film a con on him rather than on Fischer?

Holy crap, my head hurts.

But anyway: the ending.

You ask me, it’s a dream. I don’t know how deep or how long, but it’s a dream. The clues are there. Ignore the misdirection of the top. Look to the children for your proof. How to explain it otherwise?

I’ve had a number of requests — in person, over email, over Twitter — where people want to hear my thoughts on the Post-Avatar Depression Syndrome (PADS, this week’s second unfortunate instance of that word, “pad”). Why do people want that? Can’t say. I suspect it’s because I am the Overlord of Pop Culture. I sit on a throne made from the discarded packaging of Star Wars figures which in turn sits on a dais made of skinned cartoon characters. Sometimes I pull the pelt of Yogi Bear tight around me in these winter months. I can still smell the picnic condiments in his fur — er, excuse me, “pic-a-nic” condiments. I can still smell the air at Jellystone Park. Ahh, Yogi Bear. He was smarter than the average bear.

He was not, however, faster than the average 7mm bullet.

So it goes.

Where was I?

Right, right. Overlord of Pop Culture.

I’ve been declared as such by me, and since I’m the Overlord of Pop Culture, I can declare myself that. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s a snake biting its own tail. It’s a hula hoop whirling around the lush hips of a 1960s bikini model. Or something.

So. Post-Avatar Depression Syndrome, or whatever you want to call it. You want my thoughts? I’ll give you my thoughts.

I think it’s bullshit.

Sorry. I do. I don’t think it ever existed. It may exist now, as a by-product of Internet hysteria, but I think the start of it was some made-up shit put on the Internet by… well, who knows? Troll-types, probably, since they artfully can craft false, extreme narrative around anything they deem worthy of their poison-tipped spears. Or maybe the Internet gained sentience back in 2007 and now it’s just taking its sweet time and fucking with us. I believe that. Silly Internet. He’s so crazy!

People who want Avatar porn? Yeah. That, I get. You let a guy spend enough time with a toaster, in a few hours he’ll hit the Internet looking for appliance porn. But he’s unlikely to become depressed over what is apparently the surprise of the toaster not being a human being with whom he can interact. He just wants to fuck the toaster. Same way that people want to imagine themselves grunting and thrusting atop sexy blue goat people in trees.

We’ve all been there.

That being said, maybe it is a real thing.

Maybe it became a real thing once people were told it existed. Retroactive sadness. Made real by the false suggestion of preexisting sadness in others.

Fine. Okay. Approaching this subject as if it’s real, I’m here to help you with some tips on How to Overcome Post-Avatar Depression Syndrome.

Ready? Let’s do this.

One: Write The Sequel

They advocated this at the site Avatar Forums where I believe this phenomenon originated in the first place. So, sure. I can go ahead and offer the same advice. You want to revisit the world, then writing the sequel is an artistic way of imagining yourself a part of that world. Writing is an excellent therapeutic process; it’s like the venting of toxins, the release of an infection. Purge thyself and frame your existence as part of the magical sexy blue goat-world that is Pandora. (If you’d like, feel free to base it off another movie about native culture. Legends of the Fall is looking for mockery, I hear. Or maybe Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto!)

Then, when you’re done with the novel, print it out.

Hold in your hands the heft and weight of your return trip to Pandora.

Then — then?

Bludgeon yourself to death with it. Imagine it’s a phone book, and you’re a perp.

Wham, wham, wham. Like an overripe Jack-o-Lantern.

Really get into it. Like you have to bring down a water buffalo with a hardcover copy of Stephen King’s The Stand.

Two: Live Like Neytiri

What, that first one didn’t work?

Coward.

Moving on.

Some have advocated “living like” the sexy blue goat people. Get in touch with nature, one guy says. “Don’t eat a hamburger,” he adds (because… the sexy blue goat people are Vegans?). That’s not enough, you ask me. You want to embrace this culture, you want to really live in their world, hey, you gotta really drink it all in.

Wear a loincloth. Or, just go naked. Your call.

Get yourself a bow and arrow. Maybe a spear.

Find a horse. I’d advocate finding a pterodactyl, but — get ready for another wave of crushing depression — they’re all dead. I mean, except the one I’ve reanimated from DNA found in a droplet of amber. But he’s mine! All mine! I call him Mister Leatherstink. You can’t tear our love apart.

Paint yourself blue.

Tip your weapon in some kind of poison. Don’t have poison handy? Just tip it in like, motor oil or paint thinner or something. It’ll feel real enough.

Now, get atop the horse, and ride down Main Street. (Oh, don’t forget to establish your “telepathic connection” with the animal first, which involves putting a sensitive part of your anatomy into, onto, or around a sensitive part of the horse’s anatomy. That’s how you talk to it. That’s nature-in-balance.)

Howl and scream!

Ki-yaaa!

Ride! Ride like the wind!

Shoot your arrows into the infidels! Fire them into tires! Into baby carriages! Into police officers! When your arrow finds the neck of the police officer, whirl your body off the horse, crouch down over the police officer, and whisper thanks to the mighty world of Gaia for letting you take this offering as your own — and then slit his throat as you pray.

I mean, sure, you’re probably going to die in a hail of gunfire.

But then you can perish just like a lot of the sexy blue goat people at the end of the film!

It’s perfect.

Three: Seek Truth In Obsession

This one’ll be fun, because it allows you to become an unwashed shut-in. Obsession is a great boat anchor to just drag you down, down, down, where you can stew and pickle in your own madness. Create fan-art. Seek out sequel rumors. Spend hours speaking to other depressed Avatards and forming a coalition of sadness. Masturbate glumly. Stare for twenty minutes at a tube of blue toothpaste, because it reminds you of the sexy goat people. Shatter your own legs so you can live like Jake Sully. Buy posters online, get them home, run them through the shredder, and smoke them for a shamanic high — a hallucinogenic trip through Pandora’s jungles. Make love to an extra-terrestrial (what? No ETs around? Paint your pets blue!). Climb atop your stairway banister (or clamber atop your double-wide trailer) and leap boldly and courageously from your vantage point just like Neytiri — except, instead of letting the leafy fronds of lush jungle greenery break your fall, let the hard and unforgiving earth break your fall! And also, your neck!

Four: Holy Crap, Just Take A Fistful Of Pills Already

Sometimes, we just have to let Darwinism do its work, y’know? As big-brained humans, we’ve too-often circumvented the whole survival-of-the-fittest thing, and we coddle and protect those who really couldn’t survive on their own. (This is perhaps the greatest irony of the Post-Avatar Depression — these people apparently want to live on Pandora, which is a planet whose ecology and aboriginal people would kill them, eat them, and shit them out as fertilizer to feed the rest of the planet denizens.)

The only way you’re getting to Pandora is if you shake hands with the reaper, friend. Maybe Heaven looks like a murderous jungle with sexy blue goat people running around. Hey, you could probably get that from a careful re-read and re-interpretation of the Bible.

Okay, I’m not actually advocating anybody kill themselves. Relax. Relax. I’m first saying that I don’t think this is a real thing, and if it is a real thing, then blah blah blah, see your mental health professional, I am not a licensed mindologist, blah blah blah.

The only thing I’ll say is, if you’re really looking for meaning and direction out of the film and you want to “live in that world,” hey, fine. Realize that we still have a world around us that isn’t yet a hissing, gassy corpse, and you should do your part to try to make it suck less. How you do that is up to you (eat right, combat pollution, go live on a mountain range somewhere with a collection of guns hidden beneath your floorboards), but go and do it. And stop being sad over a silly movie where sexy blue goat people would be more than happy to kill your ass and eat your heart for secret power.

*smells the air*

Did something die in here?

Why did someone leave a double-headed dildo in the sink? It’s…covered in… marzipan and cake batter? *licks it* Yes, yes. Marzipan and cake batter. That’s definitely it.

Is that…

Is that blood on the curtains?

Goddamn. You leave this place behind for a week, and a handful of deviant hooligans just run a train on it. It looks like Snuff Film In Wonderland around here. A gently listing hamster wheel in the corner (sans hamster, a mystery I do not care to answer), a pair of ventriloquist dummies peering out from behind the heating vents, and the distant discordant noise of calliope music. And that smell. It’ll never come out.

Well. The maid is not going to be pleased. She’ll get an extra big tip this week, if you know what I mean.

Get it? Get what I mean? See what I did there?

Oh, stop it. It means I’m going to give her five extra dollars. Pull your dripping chin out of the gutter. Foul-minded mutant.

What I’m trying to say is, holy shit, I’m back from Wild Mormonia, fresh from the Liberal Elite Outpost that is The Park City Snowpocalypse of the Sundance Film Festival 2010. Presumably you already saw my after-report on the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, but if you didn’t, it’s right over there. When the Lab had completed, we were birthed cruelly into the world and thrust headlong — squalling and trying to use the umbilicus like a rope to pull ourselves back into the warm and comfortable womb — into the madness that is the Sundance Film Festival 2010.

So, let’s talk about that. Painting With Shotguns-style. Boom.

Snowblind And Slushfooted

Park City puts about the best face on winter that you can imagine. It snowed a whole helluva lot while out there (anywhere from a couple inches to a foot over each 24-hour period), and since it basically doesn’t melt, that means it just builds up and up and up. Fresh powder atop old snow never lets the place feel too dirty, though the sidewalks and streets eventually coalesce into a gooey, gray-snot slush bog that will eat your feet if you’re not careful. (Seriously, the slush puddles are like some devious D&D trap for confused Los Angelinos; they are mysteriously the same color as the asphalt, so you think you’re about to step on roadway terra firma and really you go calf-deep into a frozen slurry of filthy wintermuck.)

Winter there has a certain charm: gently falling snow, a faint wind, lots of light (like the eerily snaking ski slopes illuminated at night, leading directly into town).

So, yes — it puts the best face on winter.

But let’s be honest. To me that’s like saying, “It puts the best face on Charlie Manson.” You can dress that dude up in a suit and put some concealer over that Swastika on his forehead, but in the end he’s still Charlie Manson. He’s still going to shit in the punchbowl.

I am not a fan of winter.

The snow is pretty, but you stand in it for an hour, and that stops mattering. You almost lose your footing (nearly shattering your ass-bone on the icy, slush-slick sidewalks) and winter’s beauty and grace quickly tally up to a grand illusion. The traffic snarls, not just because there’s a whole lot of it but also because all of it has to wind its way through snowy, gooey streets. You saunter beneath icicles that, were they to fall, they could pierce the skull of a Kodiak bear and pin him to the concrete.

I can’t help but wonder what a Sundance would look like when it wasn’t hip-deep in winter.

So, yes. Sundance. Winter. They’re probably inextricably bound at this point, so what use is there in complaining? It’s pretty. Shut up.

Horde And Throng

Way I see it, you get two types of people at the Festival.

One: people who love films.

Two: people who love film culture (read: celebrities, parties, etc).

In the great Ven diagram, there surely exists a reasonable group of people who swim in the commingled waters of both ponds, but in general, I figure it’s good for you to know which you are and plan accordingly.

Me, I was present for opening weekend and the two days preceding it. It gets busy. In the daytime, I’d say the “film lovers” outnumber the “culture hounds.” Lots of packed buses and screenings and wait lines for tickets. When night falls, the streets get fucking busy. The Beautiful People emerge. The culture hounds take to the streets. Parties, music, snow, taxis, limos, madness. Not really my thing, though it might’ve been more my thing had I been there with more people. I did know people there, but getting in touch with them was…

Well –

The Mighty Oak Has Fallen

My unabashed tech-love for the iPhone was crushed beneath the bootheel of Sundance. The iPhone service out yonder can eat a dick. I don’t know on whose shoulders the blame must fall, but I’ll just let the shotgun spray of rage take down both AT&T and Apple, thanks.

Seriously, it blew. I guess it’s because everybody and their goddamn Labradoodle has an iPhone out there, but you’d think someone would plan accordingly to have a solid network running. You could literally look at the phone and watch service yoink up and down as if on a yo-yo string. 3G! Five bars! Zero bars! E! Twenty bars! No service! Battery low! Wireless! Existential dread! I’d try to get in touch with people, and… bzzt, good luck with that shit. Text messages would be cast out into the ether, as useful and as recognizable as one mote of snow among millions. I’d leave the town proper to go back to my hotel and — bing! Three voicemails! Three missed calls! New text messages! It was as if the pony-riding mail carrier came hurrying up just as the sun was setting –

“Hey, here’s a message for you. The man with the donkey wants to meet you at 3PM by the Old Jail.”

“But it’s 9PM now.”

“Oooh. Sorry, pardner.”

Once in a while I’d see a pair of AT&T reps — two giggling girls in bright orange shirts — wandering the streets, and I wondered, how long would it be before someone cracked an icicle off a doorframe and jammed it in one of their ears? “Can you hear me now?” the killer would cry, knowing full well that he was cackling a Verizon catchphrase because, really, “There’s an app for that!” doesn’t really make much sense in the context of icicle-caused brain death, does it?

At the Filmmaker’s Lodge during the day (pictured), you could get reliable wi-fi, and at any given time you’d find dozens of iPhone refugees, huddled around the signal the way one might hunker near a campfire.

The industry loves the iPhone.

Which means the industry killed the iPhone service.

Speaking Of The Industry

A large proportion of the people at Sundance are in the industry. This makes sense when you look at it — when you add it all up, you get like, 150+ films there, and if each of those brings 10-100 people along for the ride, that right there is a not insignificant portion of the 40,000 people who show up.

Great thing about it is, it’s a very friendly and welcoming industry. Everybody is happy to talk to you. They want to know what films you’ve seen, what you liked, didn’t like, and so on. Actually, the first question someone usually asks is: “Do you have a film here?”

When I’d respond with, “No, but I’m just coming off the Screenwriters Lab, blah blah blah,” it amazed me how many people were aware of the Lab and its significance. Very exciting stuff, and I continue to feel crazy privileged.

Oh, I did see some, erm, “celebrities?” Short list: Kevin Sorbo, Josh Radnor, Mario Lopez — you know, the big fish. The true Hollywood players.

It’s funny, though, how often you hear, “So-and-So is a dick!”

“Michael Moore is a dick!”

“Dax Shephard is a dick!”

“Tommy Lee Jones is a dick!”

On the one hand, I get it. Last thing you really want is to be swamped by people who probably don’t give that much of a shit about you — they just give a shit that you’re Somebody. Alternately, you paint with too broad a brush, and suddenly you’re alienating real, actual fans by brushing them off and trying to get to your restaurant on time. When I saw Josh Radnor, he stopped every three feet to take a picture or sign something, smiling and gracious the whole time. I’m not some rabid Josh Radnor fan (ignore the posters on my wall, shut up OMG SQUEE he’s so kewt), but I have new respect for the guy because he knows where his cred comes from. His cred comes from the fans, because without them, who is he?

Actually, I’ll say that at Sundance, one of the best things is the shit you overhear. The buses are great for this. It’s a cross-pollination of insightful film commentary and dipshits dissecting film with incisive criticism like, “That movie was fuckin’ stupid.”

Thanks, Ebert, for that thought-provoking review.

Oh, Right, The Films

I was planning on seeing 10+ films, and I think I saw… what, five? Disappointing, I know. Thing is, I was only there for a handful of days and was trying to cram way too much into that timeframe.

In order of Least Awesome to Most Awesome –

Howl: I’m impressed that they really went for it with this movie, I really am. Franco as Ginsburg comes alive; his performance is astonishing, and him simply reading the poem aloud through the film makes me fall back in love with a poem that, honestly, I had dismissed in my disdain for poetry. But the project fails to come together. It started as a documentary, and then added in actors to portray the characters, but only in the context of documented artifacts (recordings and transcripts), and then further went on to add… animation? The court case portrayed adds an interesting and complex layer, but it’s all steak and no sizzle. The narrative portion would’ve felt stronger had it actually been a narrative portion rather than an acted rehash of documentary materials (I’d rather have just seen Ginsburg himself). The animated portions, which easily comprise 30% of the film, are almost entirely CGI (which is jarring and arbitrary; why not hand-drawn?) and seems only cursorily married to the poem itself. As I say: it fails to come together. The animation in particular is troubling. It has no place there, and it feels like nobody really committed to it.

Lourdes: This is a nice little film, but I’m just going to have to bow out and say, “It’s good, but just not for me.” It’s quiet, slow, thoughtful — which translates to me having a hard time keeping my eyes open for the first half of the film, which drags. Set in and around the miracle-factory of Lourdes, it aims to have a subtle run-through of satire, but it’s so subtle you really have to comb the material to find it. Satire for me works when it’s not-so-subtle. The characters are nice, but the film only picks up (and even then, at a slow walk) in the second half, when the miracles start happening. It’s a nice film. It is. But it isn’t a horse I can ride.

Four Lions: This film’s a stone’s throw from outright excellence. Imagine, if you will, a sincere, humanist, satirical take on terrorism. Suicide bombers in particular. As Chris Morris, the director, said during the film’s Q&A (paraphrased), “Take four average blokes and have them plan something and they’ll probably fuck it up.” That idea applies here to four wannabe Jihadists in London who want to martyr themselves and get to Heaven. They’re dipshits. Everyone around them is a dipshit. It’s equal turns hilarious and sad and strange, and those tonal shifts are brave, if a little hard to navigate. (Also hard to navigate: muddy accents. Some possibly great lines were lost on me — and I think the audience in general — simply because I couldn’t understand them.) It’s a really interesting film, though the one thing that actually prevents it from being truly brilliant is the fact that the characters are ultimately hollow. We never get insight into who they really are or why these Londoners are so attracted to the idea of martyring themselves before Allah, which is a shame.

Animal Kingdom: This fucker is a gut-punch. I think of it now and I get this feeling of incredible dread. Australian crime film, totally bad-ass, really grim stuff — and not grim in the way that something like Reservoir Dogs was. This is a deeper layer, a septic infection that really pulls at you. These characters are fully-formed and not at all caricatures, which makes their behaviors and fates all the more troubling. It’s like a roller coaster ride where the track takes you only downward, downward, downward — never up. You don’t know what specific misery awaits for these characters, but you know it’s coming. Your balls draw up. Your sphincter tightens so hard it might snap like a broken rubber band. This is hard stuff. It’s also really brilliant. David Michôd is to be commended for this.

Boy: And yet, nothing I saw really pleased me as much as Boy, the new film from Taika Waititi (aka Taiki Cohen, who I assume is half-Jewish, half-Maori, easily the weirdest genetic broth in the history of mankind). Go watch the trailer. It won’t do it justice, but it’s a good start. The film is sweet, funny, and often a little bit fucked up. The kid who plays the titular character (“Boy”), James Rolleston, was hired on a Friday and started shooting on the following Monday, and was not an actor, but he nails it. Waititi’s last film, Eagle Vs. Shark, really failed to manifest, and I think ended up being more a mish-mash of tired Napoleon Dynamite notions. This film, however, fires on all cylinders. I suspect it’s intensely personal for the director, much as he seems to claim it’s not (during the Q&A he said it wasn’t autobiographical, but then went on to say that it’s set where he grew up, that the father character was just like his character, and that the protagonist lives a life much like Waititi’s own), and all this comes out. It’s a world where magical realism doesn’t quite exist, but instead lives in its shadow. Great stuff. I look forward to seeing this again. For the record, Waititi plays the father, and he’s great in that role. Oh, and Taika came through the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. How cool is that? An exciting legacy.

I did attend the Slamdance Filmmaker’s Summit, which was great. Even if Soderburgh didn’t show.

What Now?

So, I’m back. What now?

Well, I go back to blogging. I have to clean up the blood and cake icing from those miscreants what took over me space over the last 10 days.

I got line edits back from Super Agent Stacia Decker, so that’s my first priority is to bang them out and get this novel up and running.

Obviously we’ve a head of steam on the script — I’ve got to finish transcribing my notes and making sense of all of it, but all told, I have an alarming and almost eerie sense of clarity regarding the script and it’s troubles. Eager to jump on that, too, and knock out a draft over the course of February, then maybe a second draft soon after. We may try to have the right script up and running to submit to the Director’s Lab in June, if we determine it to be a good fit, time-wise.

If I go back to the Sundance festival in the next year(s), I’ll be sure to plan better and not come off a five day introspective think-tank stint beforehand, because holy shit, that’s jarring.

So, that’s that. I’ll be around.

What’d I miss, peeps?

Theory: we know that a property has entered the pop culture consciousness when pornography is made in its image.

Examples: Pulp Friction, Forrest Hump, Saving Ryan’s Privates, Shaving Ryan’s Privates, and so on.

You don’t find this to be the case with films that fail to connect with audiences. The Hurt Locker is a critical darling, but failed to make money with audiences (a big fat super shame), so we’re unlikely to see The Squirt Locker, or The Spurt Stocker or The Skirt Focker. Further, we’re unlikely to see The Last Whorehouse On The Left, Race to Bitch Mountain, Angels & Semens, The Men Who Bang Goats, or The Jonas Brothers: The 3D “Girlfriend” Experience.

(Actually, you might see that last one eventually.)

Of course, I say this, and I wonder if the art of “pop culture into porn” is actually fading. I don’t know that the “porn movie” is even much of an, erm, “artform” anymore. Now it’s five-minute super-close vignettes of genitals smashing woefully into other genitals, as indistinguishable from a closeup of a kielbasa being shoved again and again into the hole of a glazed donut. Now it’s bizarre-o fetishes. Now it’s slashfic.

I wonder, though, if Avatar might just be the film that will bridge the Old World of Porn with the New World of Unbridled Deviancy.

Saw the film again yesterday with the wife.

Got a fetish? Lord Cameron hath provided. For he is King of the Paraphilia.

First — blue cat-slash-goat people run around half-naked. They’re topless. You catch all their curves. Right there you’ve got that anthropomorphic furry-esque hook — “I want to bang savage blue animal people” — which is probably the easiest and most obvious fetish connection in the film. And Cameron knew it. He had a design goal: “Make the blue chick fuckable.” I’m not kidding. He’s practically creating a furry revolution. Before now, you look at a furry — some lad or lady in an overstuffed giraffe costume — and it’s mostly just a little confounding. But here Cameron has sought to make the furry way (the Do of Furry?) accessible to anybody and everybody.

Then you have whispers of outright bestiality. Grace jokes when Sully’s avatar plays with his little tentacle tail, telling him he’ll “go blind” if he keeps playing with it, which makes it pretty clear: “Hey, look! He’s masturbating!” So, when later we see him jam his head-hair-tail-tentacle-cock into the leathery reptilian vagina-stalks of the horse-things or the pterodactyl-ik’ran-things, you get an uncomfy feeling about what’s really going on. It’d be like if “training your dog” meant connecting with it by sticking one part of your anatomy into some part of the pooch. (“I’m going to teach my dog to fetch my slippers! Let me put my penis in his ear so we can have a telepathic connection!”)

And that leads me to: tentacle porn. Those head-hair-tail-tentacles have weird little tentacular (not a word) filaments. And they stick them into other tentacles. Tentacles penetrate other tentacles. It’s like the zenith — the apogee — of tentacle porn.

Film’s got bondage elements, too. (Funny how bondage is actually a pretty light fetish these days — couples of the whitest-of-bread have probably tried fuzzy handcuffs, right?) Jake and Grace bound up, waiting to be sacrificed to the coming military horde? Or a stuck fetish with Jake locked away in a coffin-like machine while he psychically links up with his Big Blue Meanie buddy?

Erotic asphyxiation? A number of characters lose their breath and gasp orgasmically in the Pandoran atmosphere. Dendrophilia, or being aroused by trees? The film is practically tree porn, and once more they link up to the trees using their head-hair-tail-tentacles. Klismaphilia? The scene where Sully receives a glowing tree-sap enema from a pack of howling reptile hyenas and — oh, wait. That doesn’t actually happen.

I know what you’re saying. “Chuck, you’re really stretching. You’re stretching like an inflation fetish, your body a sexual balloon blowing up with mad lust.”

And you’re right.

I am stretching.

I don’t know that Cameron intended any of this.

But that doesn’t matter.

Because it’s too late.

Film’s out there. Sully’s already banging a blue alien chick who might be some kind of crazy giant cat-goat hybrid. What’s done is done.

And I’m telling you right now — Avatar bridges that gap between pop culture and porn, and as a result, Avatar porn will destroy us all. It is a meme that will overtake us. We’re done with Nigerian Princes and cats that are unable to spell properly or form cogent sentences about cheeseburgers. We’re done with dudes on skateboards plowing their junk into railings, we’re done with dick pills, we’re done with all the Internet trends.

Soon, all will be Avatar porn.

You know how I know?

Because it’s happening already. The hunger is out there. The need. The desire.

I monitor the search terms on this site, as you well know.

And I am floored by the things people search for on the Internet.

My toying with “Pauley Perrette” and “Abby Sciuto” has earned me a troubling surge in blog hits. I was joking when I said it would get me hits, because I had one or two here and there, but now I get hundreds daily. And recent competition has come in from people looking for Dragon Age pornography, of all things. People want to bang the shit out of Morrigan. They don’t want to romance her. They want to tie her up and do awful things to her unreal body. And it goes beyond Morrigan — just yesterday, I got the search term, “How to fuck a goat in Dragon Age: Origins.” Seriously. Someone looked for that. Someone not only thinks you can do that in a video game, but they want to do that in a video game.

Ahh, so where’s Avatar come in, you say?

Guess what’s nipping at the heels of these other search terms?

“Neytiri porn.” “Avatar porn.” “Avatar bestiality.” “Naked pictures of Naytiri (sic).”

Of course, me linking to those things is only going to get me more blog hits. Useless blog hits, of course — I’m not proud. These aren’t people coming here looking for writing advice. They’re not coming her for the Avatar porn but staying for the witty banter. I’m sure I leave hundreds of clickers horribly disappointed day in and day out.

What I’m doing is warning you –

Avatar porn is coming.

A strong, fetid tide of it.

It will wash upon us — a septic wave.

Be ready for it.

Tape up your windows.

Tie down the furniture.

Have an evacuation plan.

And for God’s sake — hide your goats.

Avatar

Seems to be a movie provoking some serious debate, and while that’s not necessarily the mark of a good movie, it is the mark of an interesting pop culture experience, and me? I hunger for interesting pop culture experiences.

This one in particular yields a number of interesting questions. Is the movie a mountain of smoldering dog vomit? Is it a technological “game-changer?” Is it a racist white male fantasy? Does it force upon you the bestial desire to make love to mystical jungle goats?

[EDIT: And also, how can you enjoy the movie without feeling like an imperial sympathizer?]

All interesting questions. Further, questions I’m unlikely to address here, today. (In part because the sore throat is now paired with a head full of infected treacle, a slow yogurt of disease filling my sinuses.)

No, what I want to talk about is the one that Entertainment Weekly brought up:

Does story matter?

The article notes the contention between two camps: one that says Avatar has a rot-suck bucket-fucker of a story, and thus it cannot be a good film; the other that says Avatar has awesome 3D crazy shit going on, and so it is a good film (or, alternately, who cares if it has a good story because 3D blah blah awesome boom blue goat blah).

Ironically, the article conjures up Titanic as a positive example of Cameron’s storytelling, yet I’d argue that there the story is ultimately pretty soggy, too. Titanic, like Forrest Gump, was for me more clever spectacle and twee sentimentalism than really engaging, compelling story.

The question here today is: for film, at least, is story king?

How much does it matter in the cosmic hierarchy of Important Shit About Movies?

I’ll admit, my initial gut reaction screams and thrashes around and hoots and gibbers, hollering, “Story is king! Long live the story!” And then my gut reaction runs off and punches old ladies down staircases, because that’s how just it rolls.

Further, I also wonder if the “anti-Avatar” sentiment is getting a little ahead of itself in terms of criticizing the story. Now, this will come as a back-handed compliment (and is little different from saying, “I’d rather eat a hunk of moldy bread than a fistful of shit-covered ball bearings”), but is the story that bad? I don’t mean in terms of racism or whatever — remember, that’s a different blog post — but I mean in terms of laying out the tale, is it really that awful? Big budget blockbusters these days have stories that don’t make a lick of fucking sense. Transformers? Star Trek? Terminator: Salvation? I mean, Christ, much as I love Attack of the Clones, it’s plot literally makes no sense. None.

Avatar, for all its simplicity, makes sense. It may have plot conveniences, but no plot holes. I certainly wouldn’t call it elegant or deep storytelling, but it offers… narrative utility, let’s say.

Still, that’s really not answering the question at hand. I’m not here to gauge the quality of Avatar’s story — instead, I want to examine how important story is to film.

On the one hand, I’d love for it to be everything. As a storyteller, it’s kind of my bag.

On the other hand, are we perhaps buttoning the medium up too tight? Films offer a lot of things that, say, a novel cannot. Performances, direction, effects, sound. By suggesting that story is everything, we run the risk of making these other things matter too little — and further, it becomes a way to describe to people what they Should and Should Not enjoy. It’s a firm metric, yes — but potentially also a draconian one.

Put differently, should I not appreciate a Three Stooges or Abbot and Costello movie because the story is dumb?

If I watch a musical like Moulin Rouge, must my enjoyment of the experience be hampered by the somewhat ludicrous narrative?

With Fellini or Kurosawa, the films are often more about the image and the feel than the actual story itself — so, are they inferior to films that dedicate more time and energy to telling complicated, interesting stories?

And no, for the record, I’m not comparing Cameron’s Avatar to Fellini’s 8 1/2, but I am asking the question — can a film be something more than a vehicle for a story? Is it a negative when a film offers the equivalent to a theatrical show or an amusement park ride? Is that, as the kids are wont to say, badwrongfun?

Obviously, I’d love for every film to tell a good story. I think we are in danger of dismissing story as purely unnecessary, when it still may be the thing that elevates a good movie to a great film. Even still, is it always a fair metric? Do you go to watch a comedy and then demand that the story be more important than, say, the jokes? If an episode of Flight of the Conchords makes you laugh but otherwise has a ridiculous and almost non-existent story, does it fail as an experience? (I know. That’s TV, we’re talking about film. Shaddup shuttin’ up, rabbit. Same question applies.)

Is that metric too harsh?

I don’t have an answer. I do know that with a movie like Avatar, having a clear and simple story helped carry what is plainly the stars of the show: the world, the effects, the direction, the excitement. The experience wasn’t spoiled by its lackluster story, and in fact I found myself not caring at all during what was a surprisingly easy-to-watch three hour film. I also know that if the film had a more complex and engaging story, it would’ve gone from merely “good” to “great” in a heartbeat.

So, no answer from me.

But just down yonder, you’ll find a comment window.

Use it, if you’ve something to add.

Don’t make me call out the hounds.

The hounds. The baying hounds.

Let’s just get out of the way: fuck it, I loved it.

Is it great? Mmm, nehhhh, ehhhh, no. That’s perhaps the film’s greatest shame — it falls short of being truly great. Still, considering that my entry-level expectations were, “This is going to be a big dumb cartoon,” that’s a good-sized jump in regards to unexpected outcome.

I’m going to keep these scribbled impressions without spoilers as much as possible, but let’s be honest: you’ve seen this movie before. You saw it when it was called Ferngully, you saw it when it was called Return of the Jedi, you saw it when it was called the Phantom Menace, you saw it when it was called Dances With Wolves, you saw it when it was called The Iraq War On CNN.

With that in mind, let’s dive in.

The Effects…

…are fucking incredible. Jaw-dropping, pants-shitting, socks-pissing (as in, you pee so far down your leg, it soaks your socks). I’ll eat crow on this one. I thought they were going to be cartoony. I thought they were going fall beneath the lumbering, stumbling feet of the Hype Machine. I thought the 3D would be ill-instituted and make everything look washed out. Not so. Holy shit, not so.

See, what happens is this:

The 3D does soften edges, and it does wash out colors.

The CGI has too-sharp edges, and too-bright colors.

So, the 3D actually tempers the effects and makes them look real, not fake.

It’s actually an amazing trick. Cameron deserves big ups.

And the 3D isn’t just, “Hey, an arrow at your head! Oh, snap!” It’s jungles and labs and sky islands — all coming alive. It’s crazy.

Is this a revolution in Effects, ala Jurassic Park? Mmmm? Maybe? I’m not confident enough to say that. I think it’s close. Very close. It’s the next step, if not a whole other level.

The Characters…

…are solid enough. The protagonist, Jake Sully, is quite likable. He’s not really deep, but that’s one of his core traits. He’s kind of a lunkhead, and not very complicated. That’s okay. His Na’vi counterpart, Naytiri, is nice enough — again, not particularly complex, but you get her. You like her. You want to bang her sexy blue goat body. (What?)

The villain — a roided-out hillbilly Colonel — is one-note, but sinister enough.

Sigourney Weaver’s Dr. Augustine has enough quirks to make her feel like a real character (though, look deep, and she mostly turns to vapor).

Everybody else… ? Ehh? They’re pretty much automatons carrying the ball forward. They do their parts and don’t fuck anything up, and none of them really go against who you believe them to be. But few of them really hit home, either. None of them really pop. Even in Spielberg movies, the lesser characters tend to pop, but here, they’re mostly vehicles for effect and story.

The World…

…is unreal. Unreal. This is an alien world that’s just enough like our own where we’re not disconnected from it, but Cameron brings it together with a delicate hand — or a heavy, unsubtle fist — when appropriate. (Though, I’ll call him out on one thing: I’ve seen far too often now the “Uh oh, we’re under attack by a big monster… that’s suddenly become food for an even bigger monster! Oh shitfuck!” And it happens twice in this sucker. Dude, Jim Cameron, buddy. Ecology is more complex than that. And surely alien worlds have weirder, wilder choices available? I digress.)

Part of the world’s rocksauceomeness might just be the effects.

The effects, in this way, are like Nutella.

You could spread Nutella on a leather glove filled with broken glass, and I would eat the shit out of it. It’s not a meal. It’s a horrible choice. But Nutella! It’s so good!

The effects are a big, creamy spread of Nutella all over this movie. I have a sneaking suspicion that, were you to scrape off that delicious delicacy, you might find a stenchy shitburger lurking underneath. But then again, who cares? Nutella. Nutella.

The Direction…

…is confident, compelling, steady. Hey, if Cameron knows one thing, it’s how to direct a goddamn action movie. Everything is fast, but clear — blurry, but crisp. It’s exciting as shit. He knows all the beats. He knows this dance, and it’s a new dance every time, and frankly? It’s his dancefloor anyway. This is the guy who, to me, really invented some of the big budget action aesthetic, and here he takes it to a whole other level.

The Story…

… is… fine? It’s o… kay?

Best I can say is, it’s passable. It makes sense. At no time did I roll my eyes, as I do quite often with big budget monstrosities. Sure, it comes together a little hastily, and yes, sometimes the plot is given over to conveniences if not contrivances.

But, it is the weakest part of the movie. By far. A little extra money spent on the script may have gone a long way. I’ve heard tales that Cameron is a famous egomaniac, and maybe that’s true. Generally, I’m a fan. Titanic aside, I love his work, I love his ethic, I love his approach. Would this have been better had he relinquished some grip and maybe let someone else take a crack at it? Possibly. The lines-as-written are good, so it’s not in the nitty-gritty of the dialogue. It’s more in the overall plot and story where it could use a little more juicefulness.

And, compared to some other big budget extravaganzas (Transformers, Star Trek), the story is practically War and Peace. So, there’s that.

The Message…

…is spraypainted on a shovel, and then is slammed into your skull.

Subtle, it ain’t.

The Na’vi are the noble savages. They are not a complicated species. They’re all shining examples of aboriginal life.

The humans are the invading American military. No, seriously. Sure, you don’t get the stars and stripes, but it’s the iconography of the American military-industrial complex.

You will hear words like “shock and awe,” and “martyrdom.”

The Na’vi are an insurgent force. They have something the humans want — the ill-named “unobtainium.” We can imagine an easy parallel to oil.

The humans become the bad guys at the end. They are killed. This isn’t a cozy, “Oh, these rogue troops are bad, but those guys are good.” Soldiers — basic grunts — get eaten by monsters, get arrows through the chests, get thrown out of ships, get shot by Jake Sully. It’s not bloody, but it’s brutal.

Further, the ecological language is uber-green. The planet is bound together in a kind of natural neural network; the Na’vi feed into it, while the humans are ignorant of it. A few references make note that the humans basically destroyed “their last planet,” and will then fuck this one up, too.

So, the message is clear.

No gray areas, here.

Spraypainted on a shovel, then — whang.

My Conclusion…

…is that I loved it anyway. Maybe I won’t later. Maybe I’ll sit down with it weeks or months from now and it won’t hold up. I’m prepared for that; it’s happened before. I watched The Phantom Menace that first (and second, and third) time and loved the unholy shit out of it.

Over time, that impression didn’t hold water. It was a bucket with a hole.

But for now, I’ll bask in the warm glow of goat-faced sexy alien love, if you don’t mind.

And I know. They’re supposed to look like cats.

Screw that. Goats. Goats. Goat love. Goat sex. All blue. All the time.

Los Angeles, CA-Sundance Institute has selected twelve projects for the annual January Screenwriters Lab, to be held January 15-20, 2010 at the Sundance Resort in Utah. This year’s group includes filmmakers from regions throughout the world, including the United States, China, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. The Lab selections embrace a wide variety of subject matter, genre, and narrative forms, all from innovative storytellers from many different backgrounds and experiences. The common thread amongst the projects is that each one represents the inimitable, personal vision of its creator in a way that will challenge and engage audiences.

The Screenwriters Lab is a five-day writers’ workshop that gives independent screenwriters the opportunity to work intensely on their feature film scripts with the support of established writers in an environment that encourages innovation and creative risk-taking. Through one-on-one story sessions, fellows engage in an artistically rigorous process that offers them indispensable lessons in craft, as well as the means to do the deep exploration needed to fully realize their material.

The projects selected for the 2010 January Screenwriters Lab are:

* Bluebird / Lance Edmands (writer/director), U.S.A.

* Canary / Craig Zobel (writer/director), U.S.A.

* Drunktown’s Finest / Sydney Freeland (writer/director), U.S.A.

* 40 Days of Silence / Saodat Ismailova (writer/director), Uzbekistan

* HiM / Lance Weiler (co-writer/director) and Chuck Wendig (co-writer), U.S.A.

* How Many Trainings Must I Take Before I Can Be as Hard as Steel? / Cao Baoping (writer/director), China

* Martha Marcy May Marlene / Sean Durkin (writer/director), U.S.A.

* May in the Summer / Cherien Dabis (writer/director), U.S.A., Jordan

* My Favorite Nightmare / Myna Joseph (writer/director), U.S.A.

* Postcards from the Zoo / Edwin (co-writer/director) and Daud Sumolang (co-writer), Indonesia

* Slobs and Nags / Dash Shaw (writer/director), U.S.A.

* Unicorn Store / Samantha McIntyre (writer), U.S.A.

“The projects selected for the Lab celebrate the breadth of independent filmmaking with screenplays that boast originality, innovation, and deeply personal voices,” said Michelle Satter, Director of the Feature Film Program. “For the first time, the Lab will support a transmedia project, which expands the narrative possibilities of a feature film by creating a storyworld that embraces film, gaming and technology to reach audiences across multiple screens in new and engaging ways.”

The fellows will work with a distinguished group of creative advisors, including Lab Artistic Director Scott Frank, Sebastian Cordero, Naomi Foner, Rodrigo Garcia, Nelson George, Michael Goldenberg, Deena Goldstone, John Lee Hancock, Erik Jendresen, Richard LaGravenese, Jessie Nelson, Tom Rickman, Susan Shilliday, Zach Sklar, Dana Stevens and Tyger Williams.

Seven films supported by the Feature Film Program will screen at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. They include the Dramatic Competition selections Howl, co-written and co-directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman; Night Catches Us, written and directed by Tanya Hamilton, and Three Backyards, written and directed by Eric Mendelsohn; the World Cinema Competition selections Boy, written and directed by Taika Waititi, and Son of Babylon, co-written by Mohamed Al-Daradji, Jennifer Norridge and Mithal Ghazi and directed by Mohamed Al-Daradji; the Spotlight selection Women Without Men, co-written and co-directed by Shirin Neshat and Shoja Azari and the NEXT selection The Tacqwacores, written by Michael Muhammad Knight and directed by Eyad Zahra. In addition, Feature Film Program films Sin Nombre, written and directed by Cary Fukunaga; Amreeka, written and directed by Cherien Dabis; Cold Souls, written and directed by Sophie Barthes; and Treeless Mountain, written and directed by So Yong Kim, all recently received multiple Independent Spirit Award nominations.

2010 January Screenwriters Lab Fellows and Projects:

Lance Edmands (writer/director) / Bluebird (U.S.A.): In the frozen woods of an isolated Maine logging town, one woman’s tragic mistake leads to unexpected consequences.

Born and raised in the state of Maine, Lance Edmands is a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. His award-winning short film Vacationland has screened in dozens of film festivals worldwide, including the Student Academy Awards. Edmands also works as a film editor, recently completing the feature documentaries Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell and Brock Enright: Good Times Will Never Be The Same, as well as several national commercial campaigns.

Craig Zobel (writer/director) / Canary (U.S.A): The residents of a small West Virginia coal mining town intersect and affect one another in surprising, often humorous ways, as their lives are inextricably shaped by their surroundings.

Raised in Atlanta, Craig Zobel is a graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts, School of Filmmaking. In 2008, he won the Gotham Award for Breakthrough Director for Great World of Sound, his debut feature as a writer/director, which was distributed by Magnolia Entertainment. The film was selected as one of the Top Ten Independent Films of the Year by The National Board of Review, and was nominated for Best First Film, and Best Supporting Actor at the 2008 Independent Spirit Awards.

Sydney Freeland (writer/director) / Drunktown’s Finest (U.S.A.): Three Native Americans-a rebellious father-to-be, a devout Christian, and a promiscuous transsexual-find their self-images challenged, and ultimately strengthened, as they come of age on an Indian reservation.

Sydney Freeland was born and raised in Gallup, New Mexico. She is a 2009 Sundance/Ford Foundation fellowship recipient, a 2008 Disney Fellowship semi-finalist, and a 2007 Disney Scholarship recipient. Freeland has an MFA in Film and a BFA in Computer Animation. She also received a Fulbright scholarship in 2004 for a field study of indigenous peoples in Ecuador. Freeland currently splits her time between Los Angeles and New Mexico.

Saodat Ismailova (writer/director) / 40 Days of Silence (Uzbekistan): Four generations of women under one roof look to each other for comfort while resisting the strictly proscribed life for women in Uzbek culture.

Saodat Ismailova was born in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where she graduated from the Tashkent State Art Institute, Cinema Department. She was invited to Fabrica, Benetton’s communication research centre in Italy. In 2005, she was a part of the Artists-in-Berlin program of the DAAD. Since 2004, Ismailova has been in charge of documentary films on the music of Central Asia for Smithsonian Folkways, the non-profit record label of the Smithsonian Institute. She has made three short films which screened in international film festivals, including the award-winning documentary Aral: Fishing in an Invisible Sea.

Lance Weiler (co-writer/director) and Chuck Wendig (co-writer) / HiM (U.S.A.): When a mysterious sleep virus begins to affect the adults in a small rural town, those under 18 find themselves cut off from civilization and fighting for their lives. As weeks turn into months, they must struggle against the infected adults, one another, and their own worst instincts.

Lance Weiler is a critically acclaimed writer/director whose credits include the features The Last Broadcast and Head Trauma. WIRED magazine named him “one of 25 people reinventing entertainment.” Always interested in experimenting with new ways to tell stories and reach audiences, Weiler developed a cinema ARG (alternate realty game) around Head Trauma, which over 2.5 million people experienced via theaters, mobile drive-ins, phones, and online.

Chuck Wendig is a game industry veteran, having contributed to over 85 game-related books and several video game properties as writer, developer and designer. He is also an accomplished author of short and long works of fiction.

Cao Baoping (writer/director) / How Many Trainings Must I Take Before I Can Be as Hard as Steel? (China): After spending her entire adolescence fighting with her psychologically abusive mother, a young woman is forced to come to terms with the love underlying the hatred she feels.

Cao Baoping is a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy, and has directed for television as well as teaching screenwriting at his alma mater. His first feature, Trouble Makers, was censored for six years before finally being released in 2006. It went on to win the Asian New Talent Award at the Shanghai International Film Festival. His second feature, The Equation of Love and Death won the Altadis New Director Award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in 2008.

Sean Durkin (writer/director) / Martha Marcy May Marlene (U.S.A.): Haunted by painful memories and increasing paranoia, a damaged woman struggles to reassimilate with her family after fleeing an abusive cult.

Sean Durkin wrote and directed Mary Last Seen, a short film that will premiere at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. He was a producer on the feature Afterschool, for which he received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Feature. Afterschool premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and was released theatrically by IFC. Durkin is a graduate of the NYU Film Program and co-founder of Borderline Films. Martha Marcy May Marlene will mark his feature directorial debut.

Cherien Dabis (writer/director) / May in the Summer (U.S.A., Jordan): A Palestinian American woman grapples with culture shock, religion, and her loving but strong-willed family when she reunites with them in Jordan to plan a wedding that no one knows she’s called off.

Cherien Dabis made her feature writing and directorial debut with Amreeka, which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, opened MoMA’s New Directors/New Films series, and won the FIPRESCI award at the Cannes Film Festival’s Directors Fortnight. The film was nominated for a 2009 Gotham Award, 3 Independent Spirit Awards and was recently named one of the Top Ten Independent Films of the year by the National Board of Review. Dabis is also the winner of the 2009 Humanitas Prize as well as the Adrienne Shelly Excellence in Filmmaking Award. An accomplished television writer and co-producer, Dabis spent three seasons working on Showtime’s groundbreaking original series The L Word.

Myna Joseph (writer/director) / My Favorite Nightmare (U.S.A.): A willful teenager, pregnant with her cousin’s child and determined to get an abortion, travels to New York, only to discover her unpredictable father has followed her.

Myna Joseph completed her MFA in Film at Columbia University. Her thesis short film MAN was an official selection of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, SXSW, and New Directors/ New Films at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. The film received the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short at numerous festivals including Florida Film Festival, Boston Independent Film Festival, Chicago International Film Festival and CineVegas. Joseph has produced numerous award-winning shorts and co-produced Pressure Cooker, a documentary feature broadcast on BET.

Edwin (co-writer/director) and Daud Sumolang (co-writer) / Postcards from the Zoo (Indonesia): After being abandoned at a young age at the zoo, a young woman leaves her magical childhood behind to discover the world outside.

Edwin was born in Surabaya, Indonesia and studied film at the Jakarta Institute for the Arts. In 2005, his short Kara, Anak Sebatang Pohon became the first Indonesian short film selected for Cannes Directors Fortnight. His short film Trip to the Wound played at Clermont Ferrand and Berlinale. Edwin’s first feature Blind Pig Who Wants to Fly won the FIPRESCI Award at the 38th International Film Festival Rotterdam and the Netpac award at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival, and has played at over 45 other international film festivals.

Daud Sumolang was born in Jakarta and studied screenwriting at the Jakarta Institute of Arts. He participated in the 2006 Berlin Talent Campus in script workshops for both feature and documentary film. He wrote Dajang Soembi: Perempoean Jang Dikawini Andjing, a short film directed by Edwin, which was screened at MoMA in 2009. In addition to co-writing Postcards from the Zoo, he is preparing another feature film script with the support of the Ford Foundation.

Dash Shaw (writer/director) / Slobs and Nags (U.S.A.): Told with hand-drawn animation, a disconnected family is thrown into chaos when the scientist father loses the test subject of his experiment with appearance-altering technology.

Dash Shaw is the cartoonist of BodyWorld (2010 Pantheon Books) and Bottomless Belly Button (2008 Fantagraphics Books.) He recently created The Unclothed Man in the 35th Century A.D., a series of animated shorts for ifc.com, and a book of the same title collecting his comic short stories. A prolific cartoonist and animator, Shaw was born in Los Angeles, and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Samantha McIntyre (writer) / Unicorn Store (U.S.A.): A lonely young woman who has never had a boyfriend tries to fix her life by purchasing a unicorn.

Samantha McIntyre is a writer and actress from Dallas, where she received an MFA in acting from Southern Methodist University, and took to the stage many times at Kitchen Dog Theater. As a founding member of the Los Angeles theater company Meadows Basement, McIntyre performed and produced plays for several years before starting to write. For the past three years, she has written for television, most recently on HBO’s Bored to Death.

Since 1981, the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program (FFP) has supported more than 450 independent filmmakers whose distinctive, singular work has engaged audiences worldwide. Program staff fully embrace the unique vision of each filmmaker, encouraging a rigorous creative process with a focus on original and deeply personal storytelling. Each year, up to 25 emerging filmmakers from the U.S. and around the world participate in a year-round continuum of support which can include the Screenwriters and Directors Labs, Composers Lab, Creative Producing Summit, ongoing creative and strategic advice, significant production and postproduction resources, a rough-cut screening initiative, a Screenplay Reading Series, and direct financial support through project-specific grants and artist fellowships. In many cases, the Institute has helped the Program’s fellows attach producers and talent, secure financing, and assemble other significant resources to move their projects toward production and presentation. In addition, the FFP offers the Creative Producing Fellowship, a year-long Fellowship program for emerging independent producers, which includes a Creative Producing Lab, industry mentorship, and financial support.

Over its 28 year history, the Sundance Institute Feature Film Program has supported an extensive list of award-winning independent films including Cary Fukunaga’s Sin Nombre, Alex Rivera’s Sleep Dealer, Fernando Eimbcke’s Lake Tahoe, Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden’s Half Nelson, Andrea Arnold’s Red Road,Miranda July’s Me and You and Everyone We Know, Hany Abu-Assad’s Paradise Now, Debra Granik’s Down to the Bone, Ira Sachs’ Forty Shades of Blue, Josh Marston’s Maria Full of Grace, Peter Sollett’s Raising Victor Vargas, John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream, Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry, Tony Bui’s Three Seasons, Walter Salles’ Central Station, Chris Eyre and Sherman Alexie’s Smoke Signals, Allison Anders’ Mi Vida Loca, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Hard Eight, Tamara Jenkins’ Slums of Beverly Hills, and Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.

I won’t spoil the movie, here — not a big fan of movies that do that.

So, let me encapsulate some thoughts, real quick-like.

Overall, it has a ton of compelling elements. But those elements fail to come together, and the end result is a big, bloated, clumsy mess of a movie. You ever read a dish on a menu, and your eyes glance over all the ingredients in the dish you’re about to order, and you think, “Whoo-ee, that sounds scrum-diddly-icious?”

And then the plate comes to the table, you take a bite, and…

Ennnnh? Not only isn’t it as good as it sounded, but it’s like the chef got lazy? Didn’t really bring the whole soup together? Maybe he fell asleep in the stock pot or something?

That’s this. Tarantino doesn’t bring a proper dish to the table. It’s sloppy.

The film itself is home to two different movies, and these two different movies stumble drunkenly toward one another, and commingle at the end in little more than a messy tongue kiss before once more parting ways. One film is about the so-called “inglourious basterds” (englorius basstards?) engaging in all their Nazi-killing bidness. The other more compelling film is about an escaped Jewish girl who runs a cinema in the middle of Paris under an assumed identity.

The Basterds themselves are an almost meaningless element in the narrative. They are as the previews suggest — Nazi-killers. It gets no more complex than that. We don’t really find out why non-Jew Aldo Raines is running this crew. Don’t really find out what’s up with what’s probably a noose-scar around his neck. We don’t know what’s up with the Nazi-killing Nazi, Stiglitz. Worse, a handful of the actual Basterds themselves simply… disappear toward the latter third of the film. Poof. Gone. (Am I weird in that I wanted Samm Levine to have… maybe an actual spoken line of dialogue?)

And yet, the film still clocks in at almost three hours. For all that it appears to have cut out (the previews are home to scenes that the film does not seem to possess), it still keeps in lots of draggy moments that’ll have you checking your watch.

It’s not that it’s a bad movie. Again, it has good stuff. Christopher Waltz as Hans Landa is priceless. The character, too, is priceless, as a Nazi you hate to love, and love to hate in equal measure. Brad Pitt turns in half of a good performance — the other half falls to a lazy, phoned-in schtick as a Tennessee hillbilly. Some of the writing is top notch. Some of the writing is bulging with the fumes of self-indulgence. Melanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus gets a big thumbs-up, while Eli Roth gets a big thumbs-down.

Sometimes it’s sharp, crisp, funny, tense. Other times it lumbers, it’s comical when it shouldn’t be, and it plays goofy with history.

So. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It’s just disappointing and messy, like an overflowing diaper.

In other movie stuffs:

• James Cameron’s Avatar trailer earns a big shrug from me. I mean, it’s Cameron, so it’ll probably be good. It looks pretty. But I am, as yet, not wowed by his supposed revolution in effects. The trailer is appropriately cool, but that’s about it. I hear the 3D effects are mind-blowing, though, so I still have hopes. Despite my lack of enthusiasm, I have a feeling it’ll still get me in the end.
• I’m surprised to find that I really am excited about The Wolfman, though. Not sure what it is about it, but it does something for me — in the trailer, at least.
• You want to see a real revolution in special effects, check out the $30-million-but-looks-like gold District 9. In fact, just go see that this weekend. Skip the Tarantino until it hits DVD with all its deleted scenes re-added and so you can see it in “full mess” mode. For now, go visit with the prawns of South Africa.
• Reminder: I’m in LA next week. If you’re in LA, tell me, so I can see you. If you’re anywhere else, I’ll try to blog as the week goes on. I’ll surely tweet/twat/twit.

So, real quick, let me rattle off for you my Top Five John Hughes Films, and then my Bottom Five John Hughes Films.

Ready?

High Five

1. Vacation.

Quote: “I think you’re all fucked in the head. We’re ten hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out. Well, I’ll tell you something. This is no longer a vacation. It’s a quest! It’s a quest for fun. I’m gonna have fun and you’re gonna have fun. We’re all gonna have so much fucking fun we’ll need plastic surgeory to remove our godamn smiles. You’ll be whistling ‘Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah’ out of your assholes! I gotta be crazy! I’m on a pilgrimage to see a moose. Praise Marty Moose! Holy Shit!” — Clark Griswold

This is not a safe movie. For it’s time — heck, even for now — it’s pretty dark. Dog dragged behind a car. Dead old lady. Hostage situation at an amusement park. But for all its madcap road-trip misery, Hughes knew how to touch something truly deep and dark about the suburban Middle Class experience: disappointment. Best quote from Hughes about the short story (“Vacation ‘58,” which he wrote) on which he based the film:

“I used the voice of a boy to cover my lack of skill, and to flatten the big moments. In Rusty’s prosaic language, a ruined vacation and an assault with a deadly weapon upon an entertainment legend enjoyed comparable importance. I called to mind a clamor of relatives, situations, catchphrases, and behaviors. I was mindful of my feelings as a child witnessing phony pop inventions go to hell. I understood that the dark side of my middle-class, middle-American, suburban life was not drugs, paganism, or perversion. It was disappointment. There were no gnawing insects beneath the grass. Only dirt.

“I also knew that trapped inside every defeat is a small victory, and inside that small victory is the Great Defeat. This knowledge — along with a cranky old lady; strange, needy relatives; a vile dog; and everything that could possibly go wrong on a highway — was enough to make a story, plug a hole in the magazine, and get on to the next issue.”

2. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Quote: “I am not going to sit on my ass as the events that affect me unfold to determine the course of my life. I’m going to take a stand. I’m going to defend it. Right or wrong, I’m going to defend it.” — Cameron

Most of us, I think, are equal parts Ferris and Cameron. Id, Ego, and Super Ego, wrapped up in that pair. Once more, for all its absurdist trappings (Ferris dance parade, Abe Froman, the fact that a whole down quietly rallies behind this “dying boy”), it’s a movie that cuts deeper. It’s a movie about Cameron more than it is about Ferris. It’s about owning your shit. About being who you are, regardless. It’s about Oh My God Mia Sara is in her underwear. (Dear Internet: I cannot find photos of Mia Sara in the hot tub scene. You are a grave disappointment. You must be replaced by a better, smarter Internet. May I recommend the Infi-Net?)

3. Planes, Trains & Automobiles

Quote: “You know, everything is not an anecdote. You have to discriminate. You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing or interesting. You’re a miracle! Your stories have none of that. They’re not even amusing accidentally! ‘Honey, I’d like you to meet Del Griffith, he’s got some amusing anecodotes for you. Oh and here’s a gun so you can blow your brains out. You’ll thank me for it.’ I could tolerate any insurance seminar. For days I could sit there and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face. They’d say, ‘How can you stand it?’ I’d say, ”Cause I’ve been with Del Griffith. I can take anything.’ You know what they’d say? They’d say, ‘I know what you mean. The shower curtain ring guy. Woah.’ It’s like going on a date with a Chatty Cathy doll. I expect you have a little string on your chest, you know, that I pull out and have to snap back. Except I wouldn’t pull it out and snap it back. You would.” – Neal Page

This might be Hughes’ best film, honestly. Hilarious, but always tinged with that persistent sadness that comes complicit with modern life. Neal is forever away from his family and his job sucks and his cabs are stolen and there’s never a rental car. Del… well, I won’t spoil it just in case you haven’t seen it, but Del’s troubles go deeper. John Candy rules this movie, though certainly Steve Martin is no slouch.

4. Dutch

Quote: “I don’t think you would have frozen. Not solid, anyway, it’s not quite cold enough for that. Here’s the deal, Dobsie: I don’t screw around. You piss me off, I react. I’m not your daddy, I’m not your friend, I’m not your uncle. I’m a working-class nobody, and I don’t take crap from kiddies.”

If the last one was Hughes’ best movie, this might be his best movie you haven’t seen. Ed O’Neill as the working class nobody, a tough guy with a tough life, dragging a spoiled rich kid across the wide open expanse of America’s slush-fucked highways. Really classic. I have this idea that, the sons of fathers are always less than their fathers, at least in some fashion — it’s a generational thing, that the generation that preceded us was always tougher, meaner, better. This is very much about that. It’s about trying to salvage some semblance of ability and forthrightness. It’s about trying to reverse the pussification of our spoiled generation. Great stuff. The fact that the kid in this is basically the enemy (until the end) is such a reversal of what you’d expect, too — these days, the pseudo-stepfather would be the bad guy. Not here. Love this movie. (Oh, and second best quote: “Nothing burps better than bacon!”)

5. Uncle Buck

Quote: “I don’t think I want to know a six-year-old who isn’t a dreamer, or a sillyheart. And I sure don’t want to know one who takes their student career seriously. I don’t have a college degree. I don’t even have a job. But I know a good kid when I see one. Because they’re ALL good kids, until dried-out, brain-dead skags like you drag them down and convince them they’re no good. You so much as scowl at my niece, or any other kid in this school, and I hear about it, and I’m coming looking for you! … Take this quarter, go downtown, and have a rat gnaw that thing off your face! Good day to you, madam.”

Listen, this was a hard one to put here. First, you have Some Kind of Wonderful, which is like a reverse (read: good) version of Pretty In Pink, and then you have Career Opportunities, which may not be a truly great movie, but hell if it didn’t introduce us to Frank Whaley and Jennifer Connelly. But this one’s just too damn funny. Another John Candy standout, with him as the blue-collar lunatic forced to grow up a little bit and watch his nieces and nephew. Making giant pancakes and flipping them with a snow shovel? Threatening to kill the grabby boyfriend, Bug? Microwaving their clothes to dry them? Good times. Bonus quote: “I think he’s cooking our garbage.”

Low Five

1. Curly Sue.

*vomits*

Really, John Hughes? Homeless folks with a heart of gold! She’s so cute!

*vomits again*

2. Home Alone (1, 2, 3)

I get it. I might be in the minority. But I am so not a fan of this. I just want those robbers to die in a house fire, and I want Macaulay Culkin’s character to get, like, locked in the washing machine for the rest of the movie. I don’t want him hurt. I just want him in claustrophobic agony. Not a good movie. Not a funny movie. It’s more one of those movies where humiliation is a top menu choice.

3. European Vacation

Okay, yes, it has funny parts. But compared to the first and the third, this is like donkey shit shoved between two slices of delicious artisanal bread. It loses the “Isn’t life disappointing?” angle, and instead becomes a goofy farce about Americans and Europeans. Skip it.

4. Pretty In Pink

She doesn’t end up with Ducky. That’s the problem. Bzzt. No.

5. Anything After 1992

See, that’s the secret shame. Hughes lost his stuff, I think. Beethoven, Dennis the Menace, Flubber — just a parade of kiddie claptrap and mawkish pap. Sad, because really, he spoke to a lot of people about a lot of things, even as early as Sixteen Candles. But then he just stopped speaking with his voice, and… wandered off the path, I guess. Happens to a lot of the best. Maybe all of them, if you let them create long enough.

[scrippet]

EXT. OLD VICTORIAN HOUSE (DRIVEWAY) – MORNING

FRANKIE’s a tall drink of water: Droopy Dog face with a Sam the Eagle nose. He wears a dark suit, white shirt, dark tie.

HARRIET is both his opposite and his complement. She is a short, squat woman with dark eyes and sharp straight bangs. She wears a wine-colored turtleneck.

They share an aura of menace.

FRANKIE
This the place?

HARRIET
I believe so.

FRANKIE
Jesus Fuck, I’m tired.

[/scrippet]

Not bad. The formatt’s a bit off. But, I like it. Neat little way to incorporate script snippets (hence, “scrippets,” I assume) into the blog. Cool. Thanks, Will. Thanks, John August. Thanks, Internet.

(Oh, also: you’ll note a Lifestream plug-in widget now clings to the right-hand sidebar of this here bloggery. Enjoy. Or don’t. I don’t care. Shut up.)