I Am Sam

It's not often that we get to watch regular ol' TV anymore. I have no real need for it. TV is so passe in this internet age that Discovery Channel is at last something viable. There is, however, one other perk to the diminishing value of the broadcast formula, and it's the similar one that is still found in Radio. Spontaneity. There is a certain joy to be had in hearing or seeing something you enjoy when you did not expect as much.
On a similar note, it's neat when a movie's on that you've heard all about but have never seen.

This is how I came to see I Am Sam roughly 10 minutes after its start.

Hot on the heels of a shitty Beatles-based cash cow, I watch this film which is ripe with shitty Beatles covers. Beyond that, the film isn't god awful and that in itself is noteworthy considering that they lay the schmalz on you HARD. If ever the greatest film device to rend a heart, it would be the retard.

Sean Penn plays said retard under the name Sam Something (I forgot his last name), and his daughter, Lucy, is played by Dakota Fanning pre-fame, and Michelle Pfeiffer, who also gets a Beatles name drop, Rita, is a selfish lawyer who chooses to act pro bono on his case because she gets insecure around her coworkers. "Why do they need a lawyer?" asks you who has no idea the premise. Well, basically, the world seems to think retards shouldn't be fathers, which is exactly the role Sam is in. However, he loves his daughter and the Beatles so much that he battles to win custody over her, and thanks to Pfeiffer's insecurity and initial intolerance, the plot rolls right along with lots of tensions and social faux pas.

You may also ask "How does the world single him out?" Well, he gets authorities' attention while talking to a prostitute, completely unbeknownst to him. This lands him a little custody time at the joint and then he's let go and family services not-literally follow him home.

The antagonist lawyer comes in and serves, oddly, little significance. Antagonism on the whole is interestingly an ensemble choice, which makes sense really.

Characters are all moderately fleshed out, with development there but kind of forced sometimes. Particularly, Pfeiffer and Penn's characters. She hates him, then at some point just starts to love him. It's weird and strange, and her personal life's hardships are defined by a proclivity to eat candy in stealth. That holds no bearing on her development, but it was an interesting PG13 choice to make. Normally it's pills or dick or something. Anyway, people just start loving Sam and things just all of a sudden start working out. It's a strange way for things to pan out and cuts off some moments the film builds up to. It's also a little frustrating, considering that it's a pretty long movie, but maybe it felt that way because of goddamned commercial breaks. The antagonist lawyer's a good dick too, because he seems to be a concerned dick. And who doesn't want another retard being a parent? I can think of a few I know personally.

Thematically is where the big miss is. While everyone turns in servicable performances, it doesn't change the fact that it feels a little overdone and silly. I can't really get on board when it could've really delved deep and been something interesting. As is, it's just a big moving picture meant to make you pity someone who may or may not be a good father based on his love alone. It's very romantic era-esque in that regard, but the question of intellect in parenthood isn't really challenged as much as the pity is riled out of you. Kind of like pro-life propaganda. The question wasn't really asked, but it's there all the same. It simply stops at "You don't have to be book smart to be a good parent."

The editing is also weird. It's almost a prelude to reality TV or something the way it was cutting around during court scenes.

I can't really recommend the movie as a renter. Rather, don't put effort into seeing this. TV gives you the same kind of stuff and I guess that makes it only fitting that that's how I saw it, and about the one way I'd say it's cool to stop surfing and invest some time in it. The commercials blew genitals of both genders, but that's not the film's fault. Boy do I hate commercials. Geh. The dilemma then, of course, is that you're going to put effort in if you record and watch it later, which may disappoint you.

Beatles Fanatic Notions

Sam's Beatles factoids boost its rating in my mind. It's too bad the soundtrack covers themselves sucked. And on the question of how well the songs work in the film's context. Compared to Across the Universe, give them awards. Overall, eh. They were wise and didn't have a musical on their hands, forcing them to twist the plot and stretch concepts just to cater to lyrics that are painfully irrelevant to screen events. Here, it's almost all emotions. To give us a glimmer of hope, there's a touching moment of non-contact between Sam and his daughter Lucy while "Blackbird" plays. It works on a melodic and lyrical level. Not uber-specifically, but enough. It wasn't forced, the emotion is conveyed and that's enough. Move right along and smile. Not bad.

Across the Universe: A Diatribe and a Spoiler

So hello, no one.

Here's the first blog entry to round out a glorious little collection of gems and stems and whatnots.  I do not know what that means, but it's exaggerated anyway.

Most the time this will be rambling about pop culture shit.  I have other blogs for angsty mopey shit so I'm just using this one here for practice.  Hopefully, in some capacity, it will pay off.

Across the Universe

I'm going to go ahead and tell you now that this review/scornful reaming of the film in question is going to be ripe with spoilers and yet I STRONGLY encourage my lack of readership to peruse its every word.  The reason is because it's a terrible film, and you really need to see this in words to evade the longest two hours and ten minutes of your life.

Let me put it to you this way: My girlfriend hated it.

It opens up decently enough.  In fact, it's a fairly comfortable opening.  I'm referring, of course, to the splash logos of the companies involved in exposing the world to Julie Taymor's biggest disaster and insult yet.  I have not seen any of her other works, but I can't imagine her being able to top stuff like this.  Actually, I saw the Lion King musical and that wasn't terrible.  But then how hard is it to pace a story that was already done for you?  

Things go south right after the splash.  We get a wide shot of a beach and we get introduced to Jim Sturgess' retarded-as-piss character Jude.  Do you get it?  His name is JUDE!  Like the SONG!  You know I bet they're going to USE THE SONG IN THIS MOVIE!  How about that!?  Anyway, he doesn't sing that to himself, but he does give a really abhorrent and schmaltzy a cappella go at "Girl."  The refrain to this song, in the original, has a slow-tempo strumming guitar and light drum and bass while John sighs the title a couple times.  When you take out that laid back music and just leave ANYONE sighing the world "girl" melodically, it sounds ridiculous.  All the same, his mopey "Don't I look like Paul McCartney!?" face suggests that we're about to experience a tale of intense love lost.  The the camera pays a lot of attention to the waves and uses them as a screen on which to show a collage of everything that made the TORRENTIAL 60's so TORRENTIAL LIKE WAVES CAN BE.  Backing this is a wailing rock out version of "Helter Skelter" that is competently executed, but still stupid.  The imagery it supports only makes it dumber.

From here we get to see a bright white 50s-styled prom of sorts and an introduction to Evan Rachael Wood's character, Lucy.  DID YOU HEAR THAT SONG TOO?  I don't remember the song they did, but like most on here, it's just a bland cover that isn't noteworthy in any capacity.  It's abundantly clear this early in that these covers were, by and large, made as close to the source material as possible.  This renders them pretty much innocuous and completely forgettable, as is apparent in the fact that I don't even remember what song they used at this point.  It heavily reaks of some lame logic like "Modern recordings for the youth who haven't heard the Beatles" (don't exist yet) or the more likely "We couldn't get the source material."  

Anyway, contrasting with this bright white world of Lucy's is Jude's black Liverpool night club.  They're both on opposite sides of the Atlantic and dancing their respective nights away.  I say respective because, really, due to the time difference of 6 hours (I am deducing that they live in Jersey somewhere from parts later in the film), I highly doubt their nights overlap that much.  Movies should suspend my disbelief on crap like this, but I came into this one with a chip on my shoulder so it's not slipping by.

I kind of started to space out with the movie around this point, but then we get a clip of Jude saying goodbye to his British gal with a surprisingly fitting "All My Loving."  Still innocuous, but it moderately ties into the events on screen.  I should take this moment to mention that the writers went through painstaking efforts to make these songs tie to the story as best as they possibly could.  What happened in doing this is a few things.  First off the good: They recontextualized the songs' lyrics and in some instances DID have them serve a story.  The bad: These reinterpretations are more often than not flat out stupid.  "Strawberry Fields" is used to juxtapose scenes of angsty youth angst with scenes of way.  "Dear Prudence" is used to coax wittily-named Prudence out of the closet.  It all reads as this: They tried WAAAAY too hard.  Past use of Beatles music in film is either amusingly irrelevant (Almost any use of a song on their own Hard Day's Night), or it's meant to reflect the emotions of events on screen (I Am Sam).  When you use the lyrics to explain events or tie things together, it usually ends in disaster.  Yes, this is not the first attempt.  Previously, we had the Bee Gees' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band film that was, as costar Alice Cooper put it on VH1's I Love the 70s, the biggest act of musical blasphemy of all time.  Of course, he said that before this film existed.

ALL THAT SAID, "All my Lovin'" was used well enough.  He was leaving for America, and he promised to write home every day.  Nice work.  That alone might save it from beating Pepper.  

Fast forward a while and he winds up in Princeton to meet his biological father, who he talks to for a minute and then meets Max (a more less obvious reference: "Maxwell's Silver Hammer"), a troublemaker wayward student who sings "A Little Help From My Friends" while partying to solidify the new friendship friendship instantaneously and unconvincingly, like most relationships in the film.  

Then we see Lucy again, and she sings "It Won't Be Long" after getting a letter stating that her military boyfriend will be coming back soon.  GET IT?  The musical cue here is abrupt and her friends just start singing along with her for no apparent reason.  I guess they thought him a swell guy.  The number comes off like a portion of Hairspray that takes itself too seriously.  But again, the efforts of tying lyrics and plot together come off better here.

THEN we have Max pick her up from school for a Thanksgiving dinner and she greets him with a more-than-brotherly hug that confused me.  She then meets Jude in the back seat who is joining them.  

After a tense Turkey dinner where dialogue exchanged is trite, makes Max look like a complete retard and waste of life (probably why he was chosen to be drafted) that shames his father, Jude and Lucy get a moment where they talk about their home lives which I guess is romantic.  Then they go bowling and he sings "I've Just Seen a Face," which feels a little more forced with lines like "And she keeps calling me back again," which is impossible given that they just met that day.  the whole bowling choreography is perky and dips its toes into obnoxious, but "It Won't Be Long" is still the winner there.  Anyway, they're bowling and then decide the best thing to do is move to New York.  

Then we cut to Detroit for some reason, and see a lone black kid singing "Let it Be" in a fairly soulful way.  Wait, did this happen or did we randomly go to the Asian cheerleader Prudence who mournfully and American Idol-like sings "I Want to Hold Your Hand" first?  I don't know, whatever.  The Detroit thing leads to a gospel lady singing the rest of "Let it Be" because then we see the kid in a coffin.  I was honestly expecting him to bust out to sing the rest of the number.  It doesn't really matter, though.  Oh yeah, Lucy's boyfriend died too, IN WAR! and she's at his funeral, so there's a lot of death of characters we don't know and we see mourning of one character who so far seems shallow and of another we are JUST being introduced to so we can't identify with his mourning AT ALL!  Meet JoJo, the token black man of this roaring 60s piece.  Despite the stupid Beatles reference name, he mimics Jimi Hendrix as best he can.  The trouble is he really sings.  Oh and I guess the death of the soul kid, regardless of the ambiguous relationship, prompts him to move to New York.  Oh and that Prudence chick hitch hikes to... guess where (I guess her high school crush was so intense that she didn't pursue it at all?)!  

Do we see disparate elements COMING TOGETHER?  I think it's time for a song cue!  Except they missed on this one, thank God.  Instead they decide to use the song while JoJo is walking through New York City in bewilderment.  I would be bewildered too if the people walking down the sidewalk had some stupid choreography going on.  But I guess they used this song because of its appropriateness to the "black man swagger" because the lyrics are pretty ridiculous on the whole.  Unless JoJo here does, in fact, got toejam football and I just missed that part completely.

Oh and Lucy comes to New York to be with Max for some reason.  She arrives and then quickly falls in love with Jude despite the fact that we've seen do only one vapid conversation.  ADD ONE MORE TO THAT LIST, and then she starts singing "If I Fell" in a way that is a little off bother execution and content-wise.  That's another thing.  Most these songs work, but they may be just a little off, making it seem like they are way off.  Kind of like how you'll notice a minor blemish on your favorite shirt, and while it's not a big deal you know it just won't be a favorite anymore because you're shallow like this movie.  Anyway, Jude doodles for the first time her face on a wall and they manage to evade a police officer.  This establishes love.

So everyone's together under Sadie's roof (Jude and Max make a point to express how SEXY she is, btw).  Sadie sings, JoJo plays guitar for her, Max gets drafted for lack of any other purpose in the film, Jude all of a sudden paints, Lucy goes activist, Prudence meets the brand new lesbian day ("She Came in Through the Bathroom Window" to meet everyone, btw), and everyone's high on them ROARIN' 60s!  Oh yeah and there's some hippie characters there who never even get names.

Max takes his physical for his draft and puts no effort into dodging it beyond saying he's gay.  During the montage of his getting a physical, we get to hear a stupid weird version of an already weird "I Want You (She's So Heavy)."  I Want You is uncle same, whose soldiers all inexplicably have Jay Leno chins and make draftees kneel at their crotches while they dance.  When the song gets to the "She's so heavy" part, the lyrics-plot thing loses all wit and goes for something utterly stupid.  They have draftees singing it while CARRYING LADY LIBERTY THROUGH A FIELD.  OVER THE TOP SYMBOLISM?  NAH!  The film makers must have felt so confident in this that they NEVER BEFORE NOR AFTER THIS touch on the cost of freedom EVER AGAIN.  From here on it's back to SOLDIERS ARE SCREWED/BAD AND WE LOVE PEACE!  I can't believe this shit is done with a straight face.

Since Max can't escape his fate, they decide to go to a party thrown by a record label that wants to sign Sady.  Here we meet Dr. Robert, who is played by the only man in showbiz who could POSSIBLY play Dr. Robert: Peter Fonda Dennis Hopper Bono!  He rambles some drug-crazed shit and sings a decidedly-dumb version of "I Am the Walrus" which for some reason coaxes everyone onto a bus that leaves them "3000 miles" from home.  Since home is not California for them, Bono leaves them.  Makes sense, choosy philanthropist dickwad.  Oh wait, he's Dr. Robert... I guess he's a dick too.  

So they are in the thick of some forest where they find Mr. Kite, played by Eddie Izzard.  He of course sings the song that his character is attached to.  He mainly shouts rather than sings, and he throws in all these other silly quips as well.  It's not exactly funny, but it might just be the one moment where someone takes the music and puts a little of themself into it.  Props for that, but it also might be because he knows as well as I do how amazingly pointless this scene is, leading him to do all he could to sabotage Taymor's complete lack of identification with the Beatles catalog.

Then they all are lying around and singing "Because" in the wind, which then leads to what I'm guessing is a drug trip but is really just a stupid where people are naked underwater, namely Jude n' Lucy, and they're kissing.  The plot, if there was one, is completely thrown out the window the the entirety of the characters' stay in this place.

Somehow they get back home, and Max is now gone to war.  Lucy is a protester and is getting wooed by some protester guy and Jude isn't into her being wooed (see what I did there?).  Before the tension rises, we see Lucy's tit and then Jude starts singing "Something."  Timing, people... timing.  And again with the slightly-offs.  "Don't want to leave her now."  NO FUCKING SHIT THERE HAS BEEN NO REASON FOR YOU TO LEAVE HER NOW AND YOU JUST PAINTED HER TITS.  But once the song ends, it's all tension and angsty shit.  

Speaking of tits, I have to say the movie DOES have very striking visuals.  The colors are very vibrant and there's some neat looking moments throughout.  However, nothing's consistent and it all just comes off as indulgent trip scenes that you've experienced in other movies.  The Big Lebowski comes to mind with the whole bowling thing.

Remember that party where we met Bono?  Well record industry man is overheard convincing Sady to lose her guitarist.  This leads to THEM fighting.  I mean they serve no other purpose in the film, so sure give them some tension.  I think they're supposed to be lovers too.  But whatever who gives a shit.  I barely give a shit about the main couple at this point.

Jude gets mopey and sings "Strawberry Fields" while smashing the eponymous fruit.  At the same time, we see Max suffer through war.

Then alpha protester male gives Lucy a TV and Jude bitches and then Lucy bitches and says Revolution and then Jude goes to their protest laboratory and starts singing "Revolution" to people who share identical ideals as those expressed in the song.  Until later, of course, when it turns out somehow Jude knew these guys would eventually start making bombs?

Some riot goes down, Jude gets bail from biological dad after he's arrested but he's still not a citizen and lacks a visa so he's deported to Liverpool.  Lucy is arrested and then disappears from the movie for a while.  JoJo is missed by Sady as she does her superstar career, and then Max comes back traumatized by war but not really.  Oh yeah, and before he's deported Jude sings "Across the Universe" on a subway or something and Max sings something from a hospital bed.  Whatever.  Oh yeah it was "Happiness is a Warm Gun" because he needed a fix of morphine because that makes sense.  Jude sings the first half when he's back in London and his ex leaves him?  If stupid were a pie, and this film could eat pie, then not only would Stupid be its favorite flavor of pie, but it would take MASSIVE FUCKING SLICES.

Then Jude reads a newspaper about protesters getting killed in America and goes back legally because he wants to see Lucy, who left protester mans after they were seen building bombs as mentioned earlier (had to make the song work!).  He comes back while everyone sings "Hey Jude" and Max picks him and when he sees him we're at the "JUDE JUDE EH JUDE A JUDE A JUDE A YOOOW WAZAOW!" part so he seems excited.  Slices of pie, people... slices of pie.

Then they see JoJo and Sady playing a ROOFTOP CONCERT and Prudence is in the band because she hasn't been seen in the film for a long long time now.  The police break it up, Jude sees no Lucy, and somehow cops to file him off the rooftop, and he starts to sing "All You Need is Love" to find her out, which of course does reunite them because THAT'S ALL YOU NEED IN THIS CRAZY WORLD/DECADE!  The sad thing is I'm willing to admit that singing out so a city street in Manhattan can hear you could be a moving moment, but with not nearly enough building up to this moment, it means nothing.  The imagery pulled a little bit at me, but not nearly enough.  Pretty pictures don't mask the fact that no one died, and no one suffered huge tragedy except JoJo and Lucy with their deaths, but they don't seem motivated by those AT ALL.  The immediate characters endured nothing significant and not even Max seems all that tarnished by war.  We've experienced entirely too little to wrap things up and expect to be moved by this.  This is the 60s as spoiled kids in Orange County would see it.

Cue end credits with "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds" and the world is a little easier to handle.

The efforts for the lyrics to tie in could have easily been avoided if they opened the film to more than just Beatles music.  I'm sticking to the statement I made when I watched the trailer:  This movie is made not with a mantra of "All You Need is Love," but "All You Need is Beatles Songs" and the profits will roll in.  On top of that, everyone will be duped into thinking of some of the best rock songs ever despite the awful film unfolding before their eyes.  I don't doubt Taymor's sincerity, but she was not up to this task, and I don't imagine many people would be.  She nailed Lion King because it was ostensibly written for her.  Her directing the broadway rendition only required her to reimagine it for the stage, and her flair for visuals is undeniable and went great lengths toward making Lion King the craze that it is.  It also helps that the songs were written FOR THE STORY and not the other way around.  

I won't say the task is impossible, but it's delicate.  And while they did put in effort, it wasn't enough and I'm sure they know it.  It took four writers to do THIS?  They stopped when it remotely worked and knew that the word Beatles would take care of the rest.

Piss off all you yay-sayers.  I'll even give you that I'm a Beatle nut and seeing this superfluously angers me.  It's not MY music, but how could you?  That diminishes my credibility, sure, but I also very strongly believe I have valid points and if you look past them simply because I'd rather a movie like this was never made, then you're going the easy defense route.

Good morning.