Prometheus

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So I just Bought Prometheus on Blu ray DVD combo pack (I'm thrifty as a mother fucker!) and I wanted to write a little bit about it, so I pulled up my stream of consciousness review of the one and only time I saw it in theaters and thought I would compare it with my review of it on DVD.

First off I can already tell you that just by looking at what the box advertises this is going to be a difficult movie viewing experience. Not only do they advertise 'deleted and extended scenes' and an 'all new ending' but an 'alternate beginning' as well. why not just put a big fucking sticker on the box that says "THIS IS NOT THAT PIECE OF SHIT YOU SAW IN THEATERS. OH NO! THIS SHIT MAKES SENSE, WE PROMISE"* then you see that little star and flip the box over and see it says *promise not a guarantee of any increased, logic, reason, or sense in extras's it's entirely likely this movie is still a teen slasher flick pretending to be a sci-fi movie.

So before I get onto my DVD extended version with new middle, beginning and end, I present to you uncut my stream of consciousness review/critque of Prometheus.

Prometheus: The prequel to the Alien movies. Ridley Scott's not quite full on face raping HR Geiger wet dream. Warning this is a stream of consciousness break down of the film. I'm not being  analytical, although that might change as I get further into this. Major spoilers as I am not even gonna try and avoid beating around the plot points.

So it's way before life on earth. And the scenery is bitchin, An alien Powder's great^30 grandfather drinks a cup of devil snot and falls to pieces in the river (and you were worried about animals making poopies in your tap water). A fuck load of a long time later, humanity in the form of Scientist Adam and Scientist Eve are in Scotland digging up all the things. When Eve finds a picture on a cave wall that apparently is ancient Scottish for "Go here for sexy time Alien life contact" And they are like "hmmm obviously nothing ominous about that at all, sure what the fuck we'll get five guys burgers on the way".

Two years later Prometheus NOT A FIREFLY is about to reach its destination. And the bastard child of Dave and HAL 9000 is playing house (Seriously his name is David, I'm not making a huge leap here), watching the sleeping passengers dreams, making himself look like Peter O'Toole and just generally doing everything in his power to be subtly creepy short of actually touching the cryofrozen crew and making Hannibal noises. Captain Stiffy Mssblanderson wakes up suddenly because the audience was starting to worry this was gonna be some weird art house film like Moon They are about the reach planet LV 223 (savvy Alien(s) fans will note that the planet Ripley and then colonists found the Xenomorphs on was LV 426.) David wakes up the rest of the crew and Miss blanderson gets dressed and has a big ol bowl of cardboard yum yums. The crew consists of an extra from green street hooligans, an MIT nerd that stole an outfit from a random Japanese hoodlum, the basketball player and problem gambler from Down Periscope and PILOT RENEGADE CAPTAIN BLACKY MCAWESOMESAUCE. (he's part pirate cause he plays a tiny accordion). Also in attendance is Scientist Adam who has taken up drinking as an interstellar hobby. Everyone assigns themselves their mandatory social connections and establishing lines of dialog, the Green Street Hooligan is quite confused as he went to sleep wanting to go to Saturn for the Universe Cup and woke up here with a short pamphlet letting him know he was a rocks expert. Miss blanderson tells the assembled crew that it's time to watch an old man on TV talk about stuff like geritol and faith and being rich and how much life sucks when you pee seven times a night and can't pay anyone to pee for you. Then Miss blanderson tells Adam and Eve to explain why the just flew two years for no reason. Also during this scene it's blatantly laid out that David is a Robealot for anyone who didn't get that when he was being awake and subtly creepy like three minutes prior. Any who Adam and Eve are all "Check it out, all across Earth's history in numerous cultures there are these star formations in art that are exactly the same. and we're totally confuzzled because this star cluster ACTUALLY EXISTS but its like twenty Star gate trips away so how the fuck did Mulan and Hercules know about that shit?

(this scene is actually kind of cool it's well paced and it gives the sense that your about to get into something much more interesting and deeper than what actually happens)

 So the crew gets down to doing their thing. the pilot duo from Down Periscope pick up their friendship like no time at all has passed. Adam and Eve are invited into Miss blanderson's quarters/doctors office/escape pod. Adam starts drinking, cause he's gotta build something along the lines of a character for us to care about. Miss blanderson reminds the couple that they can go fuck themselves with their wants and dreams because Weyland paid a Trabrilion dollars for this expedition so the company is gonna get what it came for. The conversation goes a little like this:

Miss Blanderson: thank you for coming into my oddly opulent entirely secure room which has a med station and is actually a standalone rescue ship.

Eve: why did you just tell us all that?

Miss Blanderson: no reason, would you like a drink? David make them drinks.

Adam: I like drinks.

Eve: honey when did this obsession with alcohol start?

Adam: about the time you found out that you're as fertile as Dudeatudes career.

Eve: who?

Adam: exactly, David skip the olives in mine please, i never was one for foreplay.

Miss Blanderson: I have a wall that's a television, see? you thought that was actually a real forest but its not because we're on a space ship.

Eve: no...we were aware, did you ever think this expedition might have cost significantly less than a Trabrillion dollars if your quarters weren't this ostentatious?

Adam: Eve if you don't want your's Ill just take care of it for you.

(Miss Blanderson takes her shot while Adam finishes Eve's drink)

Miss Blanderson: To pointless plot information squeezed into awkward conversations!

Adam: I'm not wearing pants!

David: I would have been fucking GREAT in Laurence of Arabia BTW.

Anywho PILOT RENEGADE CAPTAIN BLACKY MCAWESOMESAUCE (PRCBMAS) has the pilots stop bickering over their bet and land the ship near plot point location Alpha 1, which is a big giant dirt boob.  They park just far enough away to be annoying and have to use that much more fuel in their land vehicles (This will become an issue later, the distance not the fuel). So the bridge crew and Miss Blanderson stay behind as everyone else gets into space suits and their vehicles and head over the hollow dirt boob to investigate.

Inside the dirt boob the scientists hang out and wait for their mapping probes to check the place out and they find that while the planet isn't breathable atmosphere, inside the boob it is. So SIX PHD clad SCIENTISTS decided to TAKE OFF THEIR SPACE HELMETS and breathe the air in an unknown alien inhospitable place....cause....you know, nothing weird or wrong or strange about that at allllllll. They wander around the boob and David turns on a recording that leads them to a door, where a corpse is beheaded against a wall. GSH rock master scientist flips out cause they just found a dead alien body on an alien planet and he apparently wasn't prepared for that having just flown two years to an alien planet in search of alien life (to be fair he wasn't exactly told ahead of the flight why they were going) so he and the other meat sack soon be sacrificed to the plot head off to get a cappuccino while the others open the door and find the severed head, a giant human like stone head statue and a bunch of sorta neo Egyptian vases with devil snot all in them. thankfully the scientists decided to put their helmets back on because well...you know. And start checking this room out. The scientists start dealing with the severed head and David goes into super don't pay attention to me sneaky ninja mode and bags one of the vases of devil snot. They all do this quickly because they get word a silica storm is on the way and that's bad. So man vs storm race ensues.

Upon the completion of a mostly pointless action sequence they get the head and devil snot vase onto the ship and start messing with the head in quarantine. Which explodes and that depresses Adam a lot because he wanted a planet full of magical ninja death metal ponies to hang out with and go on adventures. So he drinks more. David puts devil snot in Adams drink SUPER subtle like Adam discovers that he likes the lime in the coconut so he drinks it all up and goes to hit on Eve.

They Bonercise

twice ( guessing)

PRCBMAS is playing his pirate accordion on the bridge and hits on Miss Blanderson because watching the two scientists video feeds who got left behind in the boob is fucking BORING. Blanderson and PRCBMAS head off to "make sweet sweet off screen cuddle joy time" and the two scientists left behind go back to the giant statue head room and pay no mind to all the sloppy drooling vases, they chill out and talk shit for a while and then notice a white sorta snake thing with no eyes come up out of the river of demon snot. and before you can say "why are people with PHD's so God damned dumb?" the snake thing has multiplied and killed both scientists.

 The next morning everyone refuses to talk about all the sex that happened on the ship and instead we see that Miss Blanderson apparently knows something that David knows as well, WHAT SECRET COULD THEY BOTH SHARE ABOUT THE UNKNOWN INFLUENCE ON THE SHIP? (spoiler: Wheyland is alive and on the ship being old and insane.) (Spoiler the second: this is a prequel to the movie Alien....pssst don't tell nobodies) David goes to check on Adam who is definitely under the influence of new and interesting biological happenings. They decide to go rescue the stranded scientists who they haven't heard from in hours. (nothing out of the ordinary there). Back in the Boob Adam is getting way sicker and Eve is feeling a little under the weather. they find the scientists dead and fear that they have all been contaminated because THEY TOOK THEIR FUCKING HELMETS OFF AGAIN!!!! five PHD's and not one working brain amongst them, fucking shameful. Everyone books it back to the ship where Miss Blanderson has suited up and has a flame thrower ready to smores Adam for being a fucking gross petri dish. Eve is not happy about this. Adam is kinda liking the idea of going out in a blaze of eternally burning flame glory. The scene goes a little like this:

Miss Blanderson: Hey Adam Truth or Dare?

Adam: Dare

 Miss Blanderson: I dare you to let me set you on fire.

 Adam: ok

 (Miss Blanderson burns Adam alive. Even is less than thrilled.)

 Eve: Bitch just toasted my man!

 Mis Blanderson: I DONT EVEN KNOW WHY I'M IN THIS MOVIE!!!!

 (Everyone goes inside for grilled cheese sandwiches)

David quarantines and inspects Eve only to find out that she is indeed with fetus. Eve is once again less than thrilled and demands an abortion as she had the sex less than ten hours previous but the fetus is three months along. David suggests Cryo back to earth because well it's a theme in these movies. Forced impregnation is scary shit kids, don't mess with it. When your partner says NO it means NO, unless your playing freaky BDSM games which is a whole different mess.

Any who Eve sneaks off to get the surgery machine in Miss Blanderson's  escape pod/quarters to do a Cesarian section on her and its a genuinely creepy awesome scene that ends with her getting stapled back together while her squid fetus thing is in forceps above her torso flailing around and being gross and super creepy and just fucking insane. She gets out safely and David is all "bitch, I just lost the game." everyone in the theater and on the planet groans with frustration and Eve is all "I just cut a space squidlet out of my own body and you fucking say something about some stupid internet fad? Go back to the X-men movies." Sense everything has gone to shit city Wheyland is woken up from cryosleep to absolutely no one's surprise...wait? what?....Eve was fucking surprised he was on board?...for serious....well you are correct she did just have an emergency C-section style abortion so she's probably pretty tired and wiped out mentally so maybe she chose to ignore all the "clues" the movie kept dropping like big super obvious bread crumbs, but considering the other intellectual leaps of faith she took this one genuinely surprises me that they had her be surprised.

They take Wheyland to see the last living Engineer on the planet…cause this place is exactly where you want to take a frail old man who want's to meet "god". So they take the old man into the same place where demon snot mutated into penisnakes and skull fucked two guys to death, (Hollywood is liberal but the penis is scary…whaddagonnado?) Except they go past the sign that says "you must be this old or this robotic to ride this ride" and wake up the last cast member on the supernap extravaganza, which is when he promptly realizes that holy shit our way to convoluted etchasketch chemical weapon species has come back to wipe us all out because…tacos, KILL ALL THE PEOPLES!!! and kills the old man (super useful character there, cannot wait to see how we were supposed to derive anything from his time on screen at all, but hey lets wait to see all the deleted scenes he was in.) And rips Davids head off which is cool and not at all bad cause he is a robot and survives as sort of a severed head kinda creepy edgar allan poe wrote Lawrence of Arabia kinda way.

Any who the Now awoken and very pissed off engineer is rampaging after Eve and not that its hugely important but this is about the time all hell kinda breaks loose, and I start to really loose track of why any of this shit is happening….WAIT I REMEMBER! so the engineer starts the ship which is supposedly going to go back to earth and etchasketch shake the planet cause the current drawing sucks and obviously we don't want that so EVE tells the captain over the com channel that they have to stop the Engineer ship that is going to take off and nuke Earth. Eve makes a run for it and the ground is opening up and its a wild action scene and PRCBMAS and the pilots decide "fuck it we were never making it to the sequel" so they use the prometheus NOT A FIREFLY to ram the alien ship which does catastrophic damage and Miss Blanderson is not on the ship no mores cause she jettisoned her super expensive escape pod 1/5 of the fucking ship and yet still ends up along with Eve trying to outrun the crashing alien spaceship the long way rather than running a shorter distance to the side and she gets squished…good bye Miss Blanderson.

So Now the escape pod is the only part of the prometheus NOT A FIREFLY that is left and there is alien spaceship wreckage everywhere and Eve is all "fuck it I'll fly the escape pod out of here." which is exactly where she and the Engineer have their final showdown. With fighting and kicking and shoving and…wait no she unleashes her abortion alien on the Engineer and they fight it out instead. Which is awesome because we're about to see what EVERYONE wanted this whole movie to be about in the first place. The engineer looses to squidbortion and it impregnates him face hugger style and Eve goes back to the launch control room to get David's head and they then commandeer an alien ship of their own and go look for another alien planet to land on and fuck around with. Then we cut back to the dead Engineer and see that the thing in its stomach pops out and the first baby alien is born. SO Aliens are devil snot, prematurely dug out of a human woman, which impregnated an Engineer, and then properly birthed creepy explodo style….QUESTIONS WERE ANSWERED!!!!!!!!!!!

Ultimately there are many interesting things about Prometheus that would make for a fascinating story what with the idea that we were a faulty science experiment, that biology is a play thing to other beings as machinery is a play thing to us, the dependent and very dysfunctional balance between science and faith, the all consuming power of corporations, and the danger of educated ignorance, but what the film develops in its first 20 minutes is never again referenced or expanded upon. From the second that Elizabeth responds the the question "What evidence do you have that the engineers engineered us?" with the simple statement "It's what I choose to believe." we see that the film maker has chosen to accept what the audience has seen in the pre credits sequence as a form of faith for the main character. She has seen nothing more than cave paintings and has incredibly accurately surmised that these taller drawings are aliens that created man, the audience knows that this is true in the context of this story because we saw it happen but Elizabeth is pulling fictions out of her asshole and with her single statement of belief we are exiting a story about science and discovery and entering a story based on faith and obsession. Do not be fooled by the spaceship or the psudoscience jargon, this movie is as much or more a way of looking at man kinds relationship with "god" than it is about exploration and finding 'answers". Faith needs no answers all it requires is continued subscription to an unchanging idea. And if the Engineers represent 'god' in this story, then ultimately we must assume that the dead engineer in 'Alien' is also God and it remarkably changes the entirety of the Alien saga for one simple reason. The xenomorphs in all four films, represent the 'Devil". The heart of 'god' torn out and corrupted by the sins of man and science. The sins of turning your back on faith and choosing to require concrete answers and explanations, the sins of expectation and demand. The film is very clear on the fact that God cannot withstand the introspective and curious nature of man kind, it ultimately destroys him and frees the devil to wreak havoc on the universe.

But that doesn't explain away the incredibly large number of weaknesses in the script. From the point that we see Elizabeth's dream sequence logic is no longer a point of interest in the film. We are given assumptions, superstitions and incredibly un reasonable behaviors to explain away the reasoning behind the plot points in the film.

with 17 people on board all of whom are highly skilled and intelligent as we assume the would have to be in order to warrant being hand picked for an interstellar mission of discovery, you have several scientists two of whom spent their LIVES trying to figure this puzzle out, who upon getting to the planet and checking out the first artificial formation they could find and seeing some dead bodies both of these incredibly well educated and intelligent individuals decide that means the ENTIRE planet is dead. And because the story of the film needs the entire planet to be dead their assumptions are in fact correct, but there is not a single shred of evidence that any of what happened at the location they arrive at has effected anything other than the location they are currently inspecting. But the story needs the engineers to be dead so the entire planet is dead. The movie then sloppily damages this incredibly ignorant assumption beyond repair by allowing the characters to find an engineer in stasis, why was this engineer in stasis? Because the humans had to eventually meet their 'god' and discover it to be a raging mass murdering psycho that will chase them around. There is no logic given for the engineer to be in stasis, Not a single person wonders what else might be happening on this particular moon. Every single character makes MASSIVELY unreasonable jumps in logic and base almost all activities and behaviors on the fact that the first structure they found on the the moon is some how the ONLY location they need to inspect, or investigate. It would be like aliens landing on Earth for the first time and checking out Chernobyl for two days and then deciding that the entire planet MUST be dead because this one location is fucked. These people did not die at the hands of an incredibly volatile alien world, they died because they were all stupid.

The best and clearest way I can sum up how much this movie doesn't care about logic, character consistency, or making any kind of sense beyond it's chosen metaphor's is with the Rock obsessed mowhawk scientist. He has these mapping droids that he unleashes and they map everything out and create a map, back at the spaceship. This is beyond retarded for two reasons. Why does this guy not have like a tablet or a wrist projector to see the map his droids create? You want to be able to see the map your robots are making. Having it projected back at the ship wheres it is literally useless, is beyond stupid. Then if that were't enough, the map/rock scientist is one of the people who gets lost trying to get back to the vehicle, which is fantastic because he leaves before everyone else and still somehow gets turned around, which would never have happened if he had a way to see the stupid fucking map his robots made…but then he wouldn't have died to penisnake and thats the whole point of his character.

Interpretation

One of the things I find most entertaining about film is interpreting what I am seeing in ways that were never intended. Forcing a perspective change on a film can turn even the most popcorn laden summer blockbuster into a deeper and often more entertaining experience.Today we're going to look at three films. Blue Crush, The Fast and The Furious, and Ghostbusters.

In The Fast and The Furious we assume that late in the film when Brian reveals his undercover status to Torretto that this is a betrayal and a complete surprise. But if you interpret The conversation between Torretto and Brian when Brian rescues Torretto from the cops that Torretto knows everything about Brian and when he says his name this is sarcasm and disbelief, Brian hasn't fooled Torretto but Torretto chooses to keep this a secret from everyone in the group except for Jessie which also gives Jessie an more interesting angle because Jessie trusts Torretto enough to open up to an undercover cop. It also makes the final reveal conversation between Torretto and Brian a reversal because Brian's not revealing to Torretto at this point, he is revealing to himself as to which side he has chosen. Torretto then hammers the point that choosing a side in this instance has serious consequences for all involved and that it while Brian was confused as to his loyalties Torretto never was, This makes the final race/escape a bit more interesting because Brian isn't choosing Torretto over his law enforcement career, he is apologizing for loosing sight of his job, his goals and for inciting the destruction of Torretto's gang, Torretto gets a free pass and Brain stays behind to face the punishment for loosing sight of who and what he is.

Blue Crush is the story of an up and coming surfer that opens the movie dreaming of a surfing accident she suffered a year previous, we're then treated to a somewhat watchable story of personal and professional redemption, hot girls, happy endings, up beat music and a wish fulfillment sotry that plays out like a Disney Princess story for single moms working through their pregnancies.

But change the interpretation of the film and we assume that her "dream" of the accideent is actually the real accident. Everything after the "dream" is Ann's time in purgatory. Every character represents some aspect of her personality, hopes, dreams, or fears. She is being judged by the almighty as she makes her way through her own personal spiritual trials and in the end she surfs with determination and overcomes her fears. She ultimately "looses" the competition (dies) but becomes "famous" (goes to Heaven).

Ghostbusters might be the most interesting of these examples. Watch the film under the assumption tha the Ghostbusters are the true villians. The entire story hinges on their obsession with paranormal activity. And until they create their trapping and containment systems the amount of paranormal activity seems to be a relatively normal low to non existent. This is why they are kicked off campus for never being able to produce results. There are no ghost sightings in the news, they are focused in an area that is a virtual non issue. But once they take up residence in the firehouse and build their machines (which why they couldn't build these machines using university money is beyond me) The ammount of ghost activity sky rockets. And thus they face the same problem as every other super hero origin story, the nemesis to the hero is created almost entirely out of actions take by the "heroes" yes there were ghosts before the Ghostbusters had their system up and running but the film goes to great lengths to point out that for the most part no one really cared and these guys are hacks. But the further they get into their ghost trapping adventures the more and more crazy stuff keeps happening. Enter Dana Barret and her apartment building, (which was there for a very long time before the Ghostbusters and did absolutely NOTHING). You can make the case that Zuel, the key master, and the gate keeper and the rescue team for the wrongfully imprisoned ghosts being held by the Ghostbusters. Egon at one point in the film miss interprets the data he has collected and blames the ghosts and the evil apartment building on a massive buildup of energy in the NY area. When he should have looked right at his containment system. Which when shut down does basically create the paranormal version of the atomic bomb. Even the key master can see that he and the rest of the rescue team are too late and that the Ghostbusters must be stopped before they use their unlimited funds and technological intelligence to cause more harm to both the physical and metaphysical realms. All the damage and destruction seen in the film comes from wayward ghosts and the proton pack beam's wild flaming arc's of destruction. These are men stupid enough to run around with nuclear weapons strapped to their backs, it's a wonder they didn't just melt the damn city down building them in the first place. Even the Stay Puft Marshmellow man which is a punishment laid upon the Ghostbusters by Zuel comes from Ray's mind, and is just another reminder that Educated ignorance is one of the most violent ways we can destroy ourselves.

So take another look at your favorite films or get a six pack and watch your least favorite films. Take the opportunity to change the accepted interpretations of what your seeing. You'll be surprised how much it can change what your watching.

Project X and the pull out method

Having seen project X twice now I feel like I can comment on it with a clear head. I walked into this movie with little to no expectation or understanding of what I was about to see and came away so incredibly shell shocked that pieces of it stuck in my brain almost like I was there.  My jaw was solidly on the floor for most of the second half and I only came out of my shocked state of overdose as the film was wrapping up. I wanted to come at the film from a more logical angle as the rest of the night after my first viewing my brain was making connections and attaching bits of the film to other films in the house party genre.

Just out of curiosity I wiki'd the movie and am not entirely unsurprised by it's critical reception. Critics tend to dismiss anything that doesn't make them feel elevated and this movie has no desire to elevate anyone. If you have ever gotten drunk or attended a party with more than twenty people over the age of 15 and under the age of 40 then you have a general idea of why critics would hate this film. Hard to love something like "The Blind Side" and even attempt to make a case for something like Project X, which in my opinion is one of the things I like about the film. Unlike most found footage films that try to "place" the camera within the narrative so the characters can ignore it or the audience can basically forget about it, Project X is completely obsessed with it's camera's and by extension fame, from the first frame to the last frame. The whole driving goal of all three of the main characters is to drown themselves in either prestige or infamy and they genuinely do not care which. And in today's celebrity/fame obsessed society I found it incredibly refreshing to see teenage characters that behaved less like adults with smaller bodies and more like actual teenagers. We're talking about the generation that invented sack tapping, they have worse things to worry about then being "likeable". These kids were born with the internet and knowing that your Facebook page can get you on the news, and your life is always public, fame is more than a job for today's youth, it's a wide spread epidemic fed by every aspect of their life.

After my second viewing of the film I am of two minds. The first viewing made me feel like the film had chosen a direction and a conclusion that was going to cement the whole narrative far above other movies in this genre. The found footage aspect makes it easy to suspend disbelief as the party gets further and further out of control, and for the most part the film does a decent job not only creating an epic party experience but laying out the consequences of what should happen if Thomas and his friends get "out of control" or "irresponsible". The first half of the film doesn't do nearly as good a job identifying the main characters as disrespected nerds as Weird Science does and the consequences/stakes are not nearly as high as they are in Risky Business but this film has the kind of party that house party movies have wanted to have sense the genre was invented. That was the whole driving point of this film. And the fact that for their actual plot line they borrow heavily from both Risky Business and Weird Science and probably many other house party movies can be easily overlooked. In fact the film basically removes any chance of redemption for any of the characters once party goes get into the house. It should ruin the tension of the narrative structure but considering the events of the party and the infectious unbelievable feel of the film it's easy to forget that this is not a cause and effect story, this is a "How much legendary shit can we fit into a ninety minute excuse to destroy the Warner Brothers Ranch street lot." So the whole point of the film isn't wondering how the hell the characters are going to avoid the consequences of this completely awesome disaster of a night but to count young boobs, remember your youth and thank God (if you're like me) that you never did anything remotely this stupid (no matter how hard you actually tried to).

The film does ultimately fail to cash in on its found footage structure. It's third act is pure Hollywood magic as the kids parents casually accept the fact that their home/entire neighborhood has burned to the ground, the best friends meet with minor (considering the events that take place) consequences and the fact that they will all be in debt/civil court for the rest of their lives as minor trivialities compared to the legendary fame they have gained at their high school and with the media. Their efforts were a complete success, not a single serious downside to the entire night is shown accept for the person who filmed the whole mess who is under suspicion of killing his parents (don't make your own movies kids only freaks and psycho's take Hollywood's job away from them).

For me as a viewer considering the epic level of chaos that is presented to the audience the lack of consequences and the reaction of the parents/neighborhood/school weakened the entire film. There was a point when Thomas and friends are on the roof of the garage looking over what they have brought upon their neighborhood and a media helicopter shines a light down on Thomas and he double deuces the news chopper and the message is clear "we understand the generation before us sold our private lives to the highest bidder and we have no secrets from the world, you wanted to see everything all the time? this is the consequences, the yin to the yang of no more privacy is never being able to shut out the constant stream of data. No privacy doesn't just mean you get to spy on your neighbors it means you can't NOT spy on your neighbors, a luxury we are just now starting to understand.

Project X could have been an extremely well done cautionary tale about how social media saturation and technology are causing our lives overlap in ways we still do not understand fully. What it ends up being is a possibly the closest Hollywood has ever gotten to showing what kids dream of doing every Saturday night. This is not the first film that has failed to capitalize on its first two acts with a strong third act, Daybreakers tacked on a weak sequilzed ending to an otherwise solid film and it weakened the entire film. Project X needed to have a third act that was just as crazy over the top as its first two. The parents needed to be world destoryingly pissed off, we needed to see the neighborhood in the light of day with the family looking over the distruction and the kid looking at his dad and saying "hey once the fire department lets us get back to the house, you will see there is not 1 single towel by the hot tub!" Yes he and his friends reached infamy but the third act shows that mainstream Hollywood is no longer capable of anything other than a "happy" ending or the "twist" ending. and Project X some how fulfills both. Everything magically turns out relatively okay and considering the rest of the film a "happy" ending is a "twist" ending. If they had followed through then Thomas and his friends would have accepted the bad with the "good" like Cameron does when he kicks his dads convertible out the window.

Actions have consequences and this movie has no real consequences for the characters. They get everything they wanted and plan to do it again. Ultimately the message of Project X is disturbingly clear, if you are famous or get famous doing it, Nothing is unforgivable.

Chronicle

I assume for many people the found footage genre began in 1999 with the release of the Blair Witch Project. For weeks all anyone wanted to talk about was "do you think it's real?" "I wonder if they really died?" "holy crap it looks so real" "it was so real it scared me to death!" The hype, style, and the fact that the camera existed within the narrative made it harder to maintain a barrier between yourself and what you were seeing, ultimately people we're able to suspend their disbelief a little further and easier than they had been in Hollywood as of late. Of course it was fake, you paid 8 dollars to see it at your local mall, everyone knew the police were never going to let real footage like that filter out and while it looked rushed and amateur there were things about it that just felt to prepared and practiced and developed, there were points at which you were like "if these people are real they have the worst case of the Hollywood horroretards I've ever seen." But it worked and found footage films pretty much exploded onto the scene.

Interestingly enough for me the terror and awesomeness of found footage started in 1986 with Aliens. The marines we're each equipped with their own camera and vial information screen that the lieutenant could follow back in the too awesome for words armored car. There are scenes when the marines first engage the aliens, when they take you away from the action that's happening and put you in the armored car to watch Riply, Burke, and Goreman react to the fact that the marines are being blended like a banana cherry smoothie. This was awesome, you could see what was happening on the screens, knew that these people were terrified because they were getting a front row premier of what was most likely gonna happen to them and they kept you focused on the action cause the marines cameras had audio too. So you didn't need to be right there cause you were listening to them scream and die and yell at each other and fire weapons you saw how horrible this was on the faces of the people in the car. Ultimately I think this is why found footage can really work as a fictional genre it takes at least some of the barrier between the audience and the subject matter and shreds it completely, and when it really works it takes more of that barrier than you're generally comfortable with away.

Interestingly enough I went to Wikipedia (don't wiki kids it's a gateway information source) and looked up found footage and the genre has a longer history than I was aware of. Guess I'll be doing some more research :)

Stating up front that I liked Chronicle. I think it would have been better to be a full on fiction piece without the format of found footage because while the story is interesting I was left with far too many questions about the non super power elements of the story. Your story has to be MORE interesting than the questions: "Who put this documentary together, How did it get out? What were the effects of these events on the innocent bystanders and other civilians?" Blair Witch was simple "They took the tapes and played them in the theaters" and from the looks of it that's the out that most of these movies use. "Here watch these totally not fake or directed tapes we "found" Chronicle doesn't have that luxury. In the fictional universe of Chronicle someone went through hundreds of hours of footage from security camera's, the boys tapes, girl's blog footage, the traffic camera's, the cell phones and cameras of the people on the space needle, this footage was dispersed all over the city and understanding that the ultimate assembly of the narrative is part of the narrative itself we begin to wonder who put this thing together for us to see. Now normally this is just a minor question but when the boys go back to the sink hole there are park rangers there block things off and the seed that something larger is going on here is planted and instantly your questions about the origin of the assembled film becomes more interesting than the story your watching.

Add the above to the problem every found footage film faces at some point: It requires a little more suspension of disbelief than other presentation formats. You have to accept the fact that they "establish the camera" within the universe of the characters and that everyone will only flip out about the constant filming for a very minor, even trivial amount of time because if the filming character relents and stops filming then BAM! movie over, which is bad. So you have to find a way to make your characters not care about being filmed within their own reality and that's hard, because we in real life don't like being filmed 24/7 and we wouldn't stop hounding people to turn the damn camera off. So there's a disconnect there that makes your brain unable to accept the "reality" of the footage almost from the get go once the characters just decide to go on and accept being constantly filmed in really extraordinary circumstances.
Found Footage can be an awesome presentation tool, but if your story goes like this:

CHARACTER: "I'ma start filming 24/7 for no good god damned reason"

And the next thing you know the craziest shit humanly possible goes down for questionable at best reasons? YOU HAVE A NARRATIVE STRUCTURE PROBLEM. Yes it's a bummer but you can fix it with just a little creativity.

Chronicle has this problem. And their attempt at making it seem normal is to follow our camera wielding character around his normal everyday depressingly less than average world. And when the movie begins to get crazy or in ANY WAY interesting it's because two other characters find a fucking plot hole. It's a hole in the ground and it moves the plot along. I am not making this shit up. This is also where you begin to wonder who assembled all this found footage because the kids lost their first camera in the crater that Kal-El's baby carriage was in. And sense we're seeing it assembled that means someone went in and at the very least got the camera, and I'm assuming retrieved Superman's spaceship and took it to Area 51. Am I supposed to be asking these questions? Considering the movie not only doesn't address them at all, but pretty much chooses to ignore the plot hole once things go wakadoodle I am assuming they were hoping against hope that we would just go "crazy living tentacle covered space diamond that turns out to be a brain warping vending machine? Nah I don't want to know more about that, 30 minutes of practical jokes and telekinetic pranks AWAY!"

The interesting thing is that the camaraderie works for me. I like the trio as they develop and it's genuinely disappointing to see the downfall of everything. But I cannot help but admit that every time I expected the movie to finally deal with the fact that these kids we're about as secretive and subtle as a jack hammer and yet received no calls from any shadowy government or black suited agency type really confused me. Again taking me away from the strengths of found footage and pushing me squarely into "Damn I wish this was just a 'Normal' movie" territory. Hell even a conversation that looked like this:

"Why don't you think the men in black have knocked on our door yet?"

"Are you stupid? That Will Smith crap doesn't exist in the really real world."

would have at least addressed the very real feeling that there is a whole half of this narrative that we're missing because they couldn't figure out how to wedge it into the found footage format. Again creativity here is not a sin. About the furthest into really left brain creativity they get is the scene at the top of the space needle with the bystanders phones and the girlfriend filming for her blog, because well they needed an excuse for her to be filming her half of EVERYTHING.

Ultimately I left the theater with more questions than I wanted to have, but found myself genuinely enjoying what I had seen. there were some interesting attempts to craft solutions to the technical problems prevalent in "found footage" genre films but ultimately I think that they paid far to much attention to the camera as an object in the environment, I do look forward to seeing a "found footage" film that finds a way to seamlessly insert the camera into the narrative with out making it a burden or an often unnecessary catalyst/ topic of conversation.

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon

I wish Michael Bay had gone to film school. And I mean that in a good way. Bay does a few things so spectacularly well that I cannot help but let my jaw drop in awe at what he can create. It helps greatly that for the most part what he does exceptionally well is scenes of action so over the top insane and out of control that you have a hard time believing they actually happened. What he doesn't do well is emotional connection on a cerebral level and damn near everyone in Hollywood has spent the last 100 years pushing that particular envelope. So Bay has a weapon that everyone envies (even if they talk mountain's of shit about it) and none of the core tools that everyone else got coming up in the world. This presents a wildly fucked up film maker.

I have a theory, After transformers 2 made more money than God, but was critically shit on by pretty much everyone and their brother, Bay was hurt and confused. He had created a financial success, obviously the audiences loved the movie, but he kept hearing the same thing over and over again, horrible story, atrocious dialog, absolutely inane, flat, worthless, empty shells of humanity pretending to be characters. Even now he admits the movie is pretty much dog shit. But why? Does he really understand why it was critically panned? In all this time is it possible maybe he learned something about story telling other than putting underwear models in explosive danger?

Transformers 3 is our answer, and the answer is No, but fuck if he didn't try his ass off. Actually he did he 'learn" something about how to present and create emotional connection and growth in his characters, he learned that he has a lot of ground to cover and a lot of basic techniques to practice.

Transformers 3 should have been Michael Bay's two and a half hour master work of mayhem and storyless destructo-insanity. Instead we got a fucking brutally awesome short film about the "true" history of the space program and then an hour and twenty minutes of Bay trying every possible way he could think of to get us to care about a character we've already spent two movies with, has never been more than a secondary character at best, and that Bay himself doesn't really give a shit about. But this time he did something odd, in Sam we see Bays' fears concerning his own career. Through Sam, Bay attempts to level not with the audience but with the critical community and for someone who started out on beer and underwear ads its a startlingly honest and raw presentation. Does it have a single iota of anything to do with the actual movie we're supposed to be seeing? FUCK NO, and frankly every other character in the movie seems to know it.

Sam's whole story line is that he knows he's useful, he knows that when you get down to brass tacks he's done what no one else on earth could do and he's done it more than once, in other worlds, this kid may not look like much but he's got it where it counts. Bay knows he has a talent, he knows his eye for action and physical cutting edge insanity is second to none, but every time he comes out swinging he gets his balls clipped off for not being "emotional" or "intellectual" or "having a piss poor story written by three six year olds hopped up on pixie sticks and pokemon". So Sam and by extension Bay keep interrupting their own movie to make sure that everyone knows they are trying to grow, trying to stay relevant, trying to be even better than they already are. And oddly enough the world in Transformers 3 seems to be pissed that this story line is even happening. Only one character even doubts that SamBay is fucking useless and she needs to shuffle off and die already. Everyone else is to damn busy actually doing their jobs to notice that SamBay is worried about their actual worth in life. This takes exposition that could have been done in forty minutes max and stretches it out to an hour and twenty minutes. I applaud the guy for trying to expand his tool set but there are times when you gotta stop pushing your boundaries, lock in the guaranteed run and rocket a homer to the moon. Transformers could have been Bay's giant middle finger to the critical community. He could have dumped a plotless 2 hour music video of destruction and one liners on us and it would have been fucking awesome. But he doubted his abilities and we got to see him make the worlds most expensive grad school character drama seemingly written by The Three Stooges.

But once you get past that hour and twenty minute desperate attempt to grow as a film maker Bay does in fact for the most part Shoulder the bat and drive a long bomb out of the park. For all the times that Transformers 2 had me laughing at craptastic illogical bullshit and the first Transformers had me snoring out of disconnection and boredom, Transformers 3 caught me leaning forward at times. In awe of shots, sequences, elements of visual design. The sky diving sequence alone made me feel like I was seeing a Bay that we haven't seen in a long time, maybe ever. And ultimately he got me to do the most important thing you can do in a Transformers Movie, in the end I gave a shit about Optimums Prime.  It took him three films but he finally found a magic moment and drove home a shred of connection.

So over all, it's a hard movie to sit through, its got some of the old fuck ups from two, its got some of the dry "DON'T CARE MAKE BLOW UPS PLZ" exposition moments from one, but ultimately three was a definite improvement. Bay needs to stop doubting himself and do what he's in Hollywood to do. No one has ever given Wes Anderson shit for not using explosions or his lack of action scenes (not that the guy has even tried) and I wish that Bay would actually deliver on the action, cut the story and really just make burnination with awesome hot women every where and do it with fucking pride. These are not things to be ashamed of, especially when you use them the way that Bay is known for, its just hard for Hollywood to separate their 11 year old saturday morning cartoon brain, from their snooty film critic brain and having an hour and a half of exposition that leads up to destructovision that would make Roland Emmerich wet his pants fucks with critics heads.

I state here and now that I will voluntarily see Transformers 3 again, prolly on Blu Ray. And most importantly I am looking forward to seeing Bay's sack drop, and to see what he can do when he either decides to learn the elements of emotional story telling or decides to flip critical Hollywood a set of deuces and does what he does best with no remorse.

Overview and critical examination of The Never Ending Story.

On the Surface The Never Ending Story is a beautifully sad fantasy about a boy who must help save a magical land called Fantasia by becoming a part of the stories he grew up loving. This puts him at odds with his father, the bullies that prey on him, and his studies. Taking a deeper look at the The Never Ending Story becomes an intensely psychological exploration of a brilliant child in a lot of pain.

Let me preface this by admitting that I have yet to read the original book so I am basing my examination only on the film.

Bastian is a dreamer, and we are introduced to him post a dream of an ominous storm building. He has a conversation with his no nonsense, all business father over breakfast. We learn that his mother has passed away recently and his studies are suffering, and his love of horses hasn't helped him overcome his apparent fear of actually riding one. His father implores him to "take his head out of the clouds" and grow up. He agrees to behave more like an adult, taking his stories and fantasies less seriously.

On his way to school Bastian is bullied by three kids who chase him into a bookstore. The Owner is less than thrilled to have a kid in his store and he is quick to judge Bastian's reading habits. Eventually enticing him with a book unlike anything he's ever ready before. A phone call pulls the store owner away from the book. Bastian leaves him a note promising to bring the book back when he's done reading it.

Bastian arrives at school and skips his classes in order to hole up in the attic and read his new book. From here we move into the world of Fantasia. We are introduced to Rock Biter, the Night Hob, and Tiny Weeny. These three emissaries from their people are making their way to the Ivory Tower to seek help from the Childlike Empress.  They all three bring news of a great nothing that is erasing their homelands. All realizing that they bring news of the same terrible force they decide to break camp and race for the Ivory Tower.

At the Ivory Tower members of every race in Fantasia have come to seek help from the childlike empress. Her assistant reveals that she doesn't have the strength to save Fantasia from the Nothing as she is gravely ill. The last hope for both the Empress and all Fantasia is a brave warrior of the plains people, named Atreyu. When Atreyu arrives The Empresses assistant is distressed to find that Atreyu is only a boy. Reluctantly he offers the quest to Atreyu. When Atreyu accepts the quest The assistant gives him the only weapon Atreyu can take a pendant called The Orin, meant to guide and protect him on his quest.  Atreyu and his horse Artex explore every corner of Fantasia searching for a way to defeat the nothing and cure the Empress. Unaware that they are being hunted by Gmork, the minion of The Nothing.

After searching extensively they have come up with nothing. Their last option is to traverse the swamps of sadness and seek out the wisdom of Morlah, the ancient one. The swamps will claim anyone that lets the sadness get to them. They make good time until Artex can go no further. No matter what Atreyu says or does, Artex begins to sink into the swamp. No amount of effort can keep Artex from being taken by the swamp. Atreyu is now alone.  refusing to let it affect him Atreyu soldiers on and  reaches Morlah the ancient one. A giant insane turtle submerged in the muck to the swamp. Morlah doesn't much care for living or dying and explains that while he doesn't know how to save the Empress or Fantasia, The Southern Oracle will. Atreyu excited askes where the Southern Oracle is and Morlah gleefully explains that it is over ten thousand miles away from the swamp. With no hope left Atreyu trudges through the swamp, Gmork ever closer on his trail. All seems lost, Gmork is about to secure his kill until Atreyu is removed from the swamp by Falcor The Luck Dragon.

Upon waking, Atreyu makes acquaintances with Falcor, who introduces him to Engywook and Urgl, a couple of elves. One a medicine woman and one lost in his scientific work. Engywook shows Atryu what he will have to do to reach the southern oracle. He faces a series of tests that help him find out what kind of person he really is. The last test puts a mirror between Atreyu and Bastian. This comparison scares and confuses both boys. The Southern Oracle is beginning to fall apart. They share with Atreyu what Fantasia and The Empress needs. She needs a new name. A name that only an earthling child can provide. Bastian feels his mother's name would be a perfect name for the empress. The last thing the Southern Oracle can tell Atreyu is that an earthling child can only be found beyond the boundaries of Fantasia.

Atreyu and Falcor make a desperate run to try and reach the boundaries of fantasia. The nothing has ravaged massive amounts of Fantasia and the pair fly right into the storm. Atreyu falls off Falcor and looses the Orin. Atreyu ends up in some ruins and Falcor makes a desperate search for the Orin. Atreyu runs into the rock biter. Sadly he has lost the Night Hob and Tiny Weeny to the Nothing. He has lost faith in himself as he feels he was unable to save them. Atreyu commiserates with him and goes on about his way. Atreyu finds a part of the ruins that chronicle his entire journey, he comes upon a painting of a set of wolf eyes, which are behind him. Atreyu and Gmork face off as the last of Fantasia evaporates around them. The fight is short and lethal. With Gmorks blood on his hands Atreyu and Falcor reunite.

Fantasia is nothing more than floating rocks in space. Only shreds of the once great land remain. One of those remains happens to be the Ivory Tower. Atreyu returns to the Empress Humbled and hopeless. She reveals that he has in fact succeeded in bringing an earthling child. Neither Atreyu nor Bastian can believe her. She lays out the entire story, both Bastian's and Atreyu's. Bastian attempts to take a blind eye to this insanity but it only does more damage to the Ivory Tower. Bastian must face the truth, he is a part of The Never Ending Story, just as we are a part of his story. In the end the Empress begs Bastian for her new name, Bastian climbs to the attic window opens it and shouts his mothers name into the raging storm.

A single grain of sand. That is all that is left of Fantasia. Bastian accepts the sand and the duty of rebuilding Fantasia with his dreams and wishes from the Empress. We leave off with him riding Falcor exploring all the parts of Fantasia he has brought back to life. He then takes Falcor to the real world to mess with his bullies.

Bastian saved Fantasia with his mothers name. The name he shouts into the heart of a raging storm to quiet the destruction of everything he had learned to love as a child. Her name was Moon Child. Bastian's Mother was a Hippie, and this fact turns The Never Ending Story from Bittersweet fantasy to Intensely emotional character study.

The Sad fact of the matter is that as a victim of severe bouts of depression Moon Child killed herself. The Never Ending Story is the psychological process Bastian goes through to finally face the pain of her loss and deal with the issues he has with his father, and ultimately the anger he has toward his mother for doing what she did.

The opening conversation that Bastian has with his father establishes their emotional distance and disconnection using physical distance and disconnection. His father is behind him and interested only in explaining to Bastian what he needs to improve upon in life. Bastian's father is out of his element. He is a businessman, he has the power suit, the power tie, the energy shake. His current way of dealing with the loss of his wife is to loose himself in his work. He makes the minimum amount of effort to communicate with Bastain but only on an entirely realistic and down to earth level, the day dreaming and fantasy stories and obsession with horses, all reminds his father to much of Moon Child. Moon Child was the primary parent in Bastain's young life. She instilled in him his love of fantasy and adventure, and considering the type of bond between mother and child it is easy to wonder what Bastian's parents saw in each other and or what his father must have been like when his wife was alive. ultimately wether or not his father realizes it, by asking Bastian to "keep his feet on the ground" he is asking him to forget and let go of the last good memories he has of his mother. This could be the Catalyst of the Nothing arriving in Fantasia.

On his way to School Bastian is chased by three bullies, who chase him into a bookstore. The bookstore Owner isn't trying to trick him into taking the book because it's Bastian's gateway to maturity he is offering Bastian a way to process everything that has happened to him. The threat the bookstore owner makes of not being able to be a little boy again when he is done with the book has nothing to do with the book itself but purely the type of transformation Bastian needs to go through.

Bastian holes up in the attic at his school. We then transfer into The Never Ending Story (Bastian's subconscious). The first characters we meet are The Rock Biter, which represents Bastian's inner child complete with tricycle. Tiny Weeny and his racing snail represent the way Bastian thinks of his father. From the fancy close to the super fast if unassuming vehicle. Night Hob is Bastian's memories of his mothers down or bad days. The discussion the trio has tells us that it is early in life when Bastain names his mother's depression. "what's wrong with mommy?" "It's nothing son, she's just not feeling well today".

At the Ivory Tower we see a whole menagerie of strange and wonderful characters. These represent all the stories that Moon Child shared with Bastian. The Empresses assistant is Bastian's father's best intentions. His brave face if you will. Attempting to do everything possible to make it through this situation and revealing Atreyu to the audience. Atreyu is Bastian's brave face, the conversation that Atreyu and the assistant have is emotionally reversed from The conversation Bastian has with his father. In this conversation we see that his father while asking him to grow up was doing so because his father cannot survive alone, he cannot move on if his son sinks further into these stories, closer to the all consuming darkness that took, his wife. His father needs a partner in getting well and his last hope is his own son. The assistant gives Atreyu the Orin, which is the embodiment of hope.

Next we meet Artex, Atreyu's horse. Artex is Bastian's memories of his mothers good days and the first leg of Atreyu's journey is a metaphor for the times he spent reading and exploring with his mother. Always however the nothing is just over the horizon, and it's minion, Gmork is hot on Arteyu's trail. Gmork is the embodyment of Bastain's fathers insistence that he grow up and leave all this behind with out a second thought. To abandon dreams and adventures and be a down to earth person.

 The swamps of sadness. This is the period of time that caused Moon Child to take her own life. Signified by Artex sinking into the swamp. Morlah, The ancient one is how Bastian sees his father immediately after his mothers death. Sullen, depressed, Morlah's alergies to Atreyu represent his father's inability to be around his son as he to strongly resembled his father of his mother and those memories are to painful and fresh. Finding Morlah to be no help Atreyu leaves and tries to escape the swamp. It is here that Gmork almost succeeds in killing Atreyu. Bastian almost gave up and left his fantasy world and love of books behind him, until it became the only place where he felt ok. This reconnection with fiction and fantasy is represented by Falcor the luck dragon, rescuing him from the swamp.

When Atreyu awakes we meet the representation of his grand parents on his mothers side, who he stayed with until his father could put himself back together. It is here that Atreyu learns what lies between him and the "Southern Oracle" Two "Gates" The first designed to test you and see if you feel your true worth. As Atreyu is merely the face that Bastian shows to the world to keep people out, it is doubtful that either boy realizes the danger of this first test. From here on out Atreyu and Bastian will be drawn closer both mentally and emotionally until the end of the film.

Having barely made it through the sphinx gate Atreyu comes to the magic mirror gate. In which Atreyu sees Bastian in the mirror. Bastian cannot handle this revelation and he rather than Atreyu fails the test. While he has always taken his fantasy's and books more serious then most this is to much for him to handle, to personal. Even he must admit that he has always had concrete boundaries between himself and his fantasies. He fears he is breaking the promise he made to his father, even though he has made it this far he is no longer sure that his father is wrong. In the end he cannot give up on Atreyu and by extension Fantasia so he returns to the book, Thus proving the store owner wrong, he is an adult and can finish what he starts, he is not scared and refuses to quit.

The Southern Oracle while filled with information is a secret third test for the now bonded boy's. The revelation that a name given by a human child and that human children live outside the boundaries of fantasia is a test that both Atreyu and Bastain fail in their own way. Bastian still thinks he is only reading the book, and thus he doesn't take his desire to give the Empress his mothers name seriously. Atreyu hears "outside the boundaries of Fantasia" and assumes there is such a place rather than looking inward as the mirror showed him.

As the nothing continues to rage, the storm in Bastian's hometown is getting worse as well. This metaphorical connection becomes very important for Bastian's development.

Falcor and Atreyu make a desperate run to find the boundaries of Fantasia, meeting the nothing in all directions. The pair are separated and Atreyu looses the Orin. Atreyu wakes up on a beach and runs into The Rock Biter who has lost both the night hob and Tiny Weeny to The Nothing. This is Bastian's inner child dealing with his feelings that somehow his mothers death and father's collapse are his fault. Atreyu can do nothing to console Bastian's inner child.

Atreyu then discovers the chronicle of his entire journey. Presented with the accounting of everything he has done up to this point in his life he finally meets Gmork. They each share their failures. Atreyu who feels he has failed to save Fantasia, and Gmork who has failed to find and kill Atreyu. Gmork lets Atreyu know that he has been searching for the wrong "boundaries" and that it is Atreyu's own ignorance of his own universe that has doomed them all. The Nothing's final destruction is imminent and Atreyu at the end of the world admits that Gmork has found his prey and that now is the best time for them to settle their debt.

With Gmork's blood on his hands Atreyu once again seeks out Falcor who has found the Orin. The pair reunite as The Nothing finally erases the last of Fantasia. Only shreds of the fantasies Moon Child loved now remain. Bastian has grown much sense he opened The Never Ending Story. Only one small, intensely painful, beautifully personal step remains. Fantasia can be saved as long as Bastian can admit to missing, loving, being mad at and possibly hating his mother all at the same time. He has to accept that her decisions were her own and that she loved him more than he will ever know. Atreyu and Falcor go to see the only person that can help them achieve this goal. The Childlike Empress.

The Empress forces Bastian and Atryu to realize that they are in fact one in the same, and that all of Fantasia can be reborn if only Bastian can reconcile the memories of his mother as a person with his feelings of her as a godlike figure. This is achieved simply by "naming" the Empress or more specifically taking ownership and control of the stories and fantasies Moon child introduced him to. Responsibility is a sign of maturity, and taking responsibility for Fantasia means that he must admit it is time to move on, time to grow up into what ever person he wishes to become, time to accept his mother's death and protect and cherish his memories of her for the rest of his life. Having made the final sacrifice he combines both his promise to his father and his love for the gifts his mother gave him into his new emotional state.

Next up: Labyrinth!

80's Movies Part 1

Seems like I can't turn on the television with out VH1 trying to rape my memories of decades I never lived through. I was born in 1982 ( I'm Y2K  compliant) and I sure as hell loved the 70's. But bad TV specials isn't the subject of this article. This article  of Blame Lundon is my very first reader request and the beginning of a series of reviews and critiques. My favorite 80's movies of the 80's, (<---super 8 is basically an 80's movie but it was made recently so figure that one out.)  A decade for the most part I barely remember, but have strong feelings for.

Using IMDB I went through about the top 750 films in each year from 1980-89 and came up with a list of my favorite films from the 80's. As this is my article this list is definite and complete. Unless you count movies from the 80's that I haven't seen yet, which there are many. So this list is in no way definite or complete, but don't argue with me I'm a L.A.R.P'er and can beat you up (empty threat, please don't show up at my house)

I was not expecting to have such a large list of movies so I have broken this topic into subsections. with Categories like best science fiction, best kids movies, best wtf?!, best background noise movies, best movies you never admit to liking, Best American's don't like subtitles movies, and what ever other random categories I can think up.

Are you ready for the pointlessly arbitrary breakdown? OF COURSE YOU ARE!

This week I'm Grouping up and breaking down Legend 1986, The Never Ending Story 1985, Labyrinth 1986, and The Dark Crystal 1982. It's Myth's, Legends, and Muppet's week here at Blame Lundon!

The best thing about the 80's was that Hollywood hadn't quite gotten to the point where computers could animate anything you could dream of. And yet there were a number of films that would end up becoming classics because they were down to the smallest detail, truly fantastic not just in terms of quality but in terms of how they really built whole new places that removed you from your current time and space.  Special effects houses created real live props and sets that were free from digital interference. Costumes and props had to be designed to work in a real space. Some how this made it easier as a child to not only be spirited away into these fantasy worlds but now watching them as an adult I can appreciate the true artistry that was put into creating these real live works of art.

I am not slighting computer effects or animation in any way, I just have a very special place in my heart for a time in Hollywood where if you were gonna shoot it you had to build it. Knowing that you could actually get your hands on what you were seeing helped to build a connection not just with the props and locations but the characters, your brain didn't have to question the stuff that pulls you out of a story, like weight of an object or density or texture, why someone's clothing is bending in such an unnatural way, These are problems that animation works very hard to slip right past our questioning brains so that we can actually watch their story play out. In the 80's all Hollywood had to do was build elaborate sets and costumes for really real and audiences were sold.

LEGEND 1986

I have seen this movie many times through out my life and every time I see it my brain whitewashes the truly sinister evil of the devil and his minions. I think this is largely due in part to two things. The first is the Tangerine Dream soundtrack. Which I love. I have yet to watch the directors cut of the film which has the original orchestral score (I own it and will be watching it soon) But the music in this was such an important part of what made me love it as a child that I really cannot imagine it sounding any different.

Legend is such a strong meta-myth that applying metaphor to it is like claiming there is a novel in every can of alphabet soup. And I freely admit that considering the highly stylized feel of the film it probably doesn't go out of its way to welcome fair weather fans of the genre. I would have to take a survey to know for sure but I'm gonna guess it's one of those movies that people either love or hate.

Things I really liked:

The textures and density of the set dressing. Most people comment on the glitter that is literally all over this movie and leave it at that, and I personally think they are missing some truly great set design and dressing. Every location feels very complete. I found myself marveling at all the crap in the giant kitchen, everything was laid out and place in such a way that you could tell these giants did a lot of cooking in there. The set design of the kitchen creates more character for those two giants than the actual giants do. This is their place, and you cannot help but feel a bit bad that these little bastards are fucking with all their shit.

Tim Curry as the Devil. I know they probably messed with his voice in post but everything about him from the design of his makeup and costume, his voice, the neon green eyes in the opening reveal. Everything about this character made me kind of understand why evil was so enticing, if the devil is that fascinating of course you wanna turn away from good.

The Victory against the devil is very dark. I like that basically the message is that by "killing" him they released the concentrated "darkness" out into the cosmos to be dispersed amongst all creation. Kind of like Obi-Wan when he said "strike me down and I shall become more powerful than you can imagine." With this understood we then see the future pain and loss of magic and wonder in the end of the movie. The Mystical creatures probably understand that they aren't just waving goodbye to Jack and Lili, but to all humanity. These are creatures and beings that cannot withstand contact with the darkness in the human heart and are mortally wounded by the ease in which the average person can disbelieve anything they choose to. it is up to the viewer to decide for themselves if the magical world ceased to exist or just cut off contact with humanity.

Stuff that didn't really work for me:

Tom Cruise, I just didn't like him in this role. He very much felt out of place amongst a cast that was doing everything in their power to sell this movie to the masses. And considering he doesn't admit to being in this movie I can pretty much assume he didn't give a shit about it then either.

Next up is The Never Ending Story!