Posts Tagged ‘movies’

Recommended Viewing: The Sleep Dealer

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I have often thought that the future of sci­ence fic­tion isn’t in tales of first world nations like the United States. The future sto­ries we should be explor­ing and con­tem­plat­ing more are the ones involv­ing (and told by res­i­dents of) life on the fringes, in the fave­las and the bor­der towns, in the devel­op­ing world, where raw human­ity bumps up against the shiny and anti­sep­tic American cap­i­tal­ist way.

Most do not live the lives of rel­a­tive lux­ury we do, but one of the promises of glob­al­ism has been said to be an ele­va­tion of those who are in poverty. Will those liv­ing in Brazil, Mexico, Kenya, or China one day know lives with bet­ter amenities,health care, and basic nutri­tion? Or will the same web of post-​​colonialism, transna­tional bank­ing deal­ing from decks stacked against the poor, and cor­rupt gov­ern­ment regimes keep third world coun­tries rooted in poverty?

The Sleep Dealer is an exam­i­na­tion of American glob­al­iza­tion as it impacts our lives today, where resent­ment to ille­gal immi­gra­tion in America is as high as it ever has been, but where there are still jobs to be had for those who brave the cross­ing (at least, prior to our eco­nomic woes). The world of the Sleep Dealer is not so dif­fer­ent from our own, except in a few very impor­tant ways.

The United States of the sleep dealer is mostly seen indi­rectly, through the lenses of telep­res­ence drones, or in the cramped con­fines of vir­tual oper­a­tor sta­tions where sol­diers pilot drones to pro­tect cor­po­ra­tized water in places like Mexico. America appears to be sealed off com­pletely to immi­gra­tion, at least from Mexico. A wall has been built, and it’s guarded by remote-​​controlled cam­eras with heavy machine guns. A future that seemed much less implau­si­ble 2 years ago when the anti-​​immigration sen­ti­ment seemed to reach its peak.

The U.S. of this future still requires cheap labor, even if it can­not abide the phys­i­cal pres­ence of immi­grants, legal or oth­er­wise. In this near future, vir­tual real­ity tech­nol­ogy, por­trayed in a way that would fit in with any cyber­punk novel (a series of plugs along the arms and shoul­ders that allow a kind of neural inter­face), allows the poor to work within the States. It’s best not to think too hard about the por­trayal of the equip­ment here, which seems more tai­lored toward a par­tic­u­lar visual aes­thetic than mak­ing log­i­cal sense. What was with the gas masks pip­ing in oxy­gen? Nevertheless–

The back­drop of the world in the Sleep Dealer feels lived in, well worn, and not implau­si­ble. Our pro­tag­o­nist is an intel­li­gent young man with an inter­est in escap­ing his tiny, water-​​impoverished farm­stead. He tin­kers with hack­ing telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions satel­lites as a means of escape, but soon he over­hears some­thing that he should not, and the events of the story are set into motion.

In the after­math of a tragedy, Memo (a very Gibsonian name, I thought) trav­els to Tijuana to receive the implants that will allow him to work in the vir­tual labor fac­to­ries. He meets a woman, a writer who sells her mem­o­ries uploaded to the net­work, who takes an inter­est in his painful past and whose sto­ries about Memo are funded by a mys­te­ri­ous buyer.

I’ll say no more about the plot, except to say that while this is a sci­ence fic­tion film, it is also an inde­pen­dent film in that sense that it is not the tightly shot, leave-​​nothing-​​unanswered big stu­dio style of sto­ry­telling. The cin­e­matog­ra­phy is often dream­like, and the story’s gen­tle nar­ra­tion rein­force this. The story in some ways feels like a character’s lucid dream.

It’s a con­tem­pla­tive film in its pac­ing as well. Those expect­ing a tightly plot­ted thriller or action film should look else­where. This is a film that is more inter­ested in let­ting the audi­ence come to its own con­clu­sions than lec­tur­ing morally (or otherwise).

This was some­thing dif­fer­ent than what we are used to see­ing. While some of its ideas may not seem so fresh to long-​​time read­ers of sci­ence fic­tion, I don’t think this is some­thing we’ve ever seen por­trayed this way on the sil­ver screen. It’s worth pick­ing up on DVD or rent­ing at the very least.

5 Writing Lessons Learned from Land of the Lost

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

This past week­end, I spent my hard-​​earned money to see the new Land of the Lost movie. In terms of enter­tain­ment, I do not feel that I got my money’s worth out of it. So here I sit, try­ing milk­ing a blog post out of the film in order to get some writ­ing lessons from the thing. I’ll be damned if I am going to actu­ally waste money in these hard eco­nomic times!

I guess my child­hood appre­ci­a­tion of the orig­i­nal series col­ored my expec­ta­tions for the film. No wor­ries, it won’t hap­pen again. At least, until G.I. Joe comes out. And Transformers 2. Ahem.

This post is going to be rife with spoil­ers, but hey, if you don’t want to see the film (which you shouldn’t), or god for­bid, saw it already, then those won’t bother you. Lessons behind the cut. Oh, and yes. I’m dis­card­ing my usual “don’t say it if you can’t say some­thing nice” ethos here, because, well, some­times you wake up on Monday morn­ing and want to tear apart a bad film. Onward!

Continue read­ing ›

5 Writing Lessons I Learned from Pixar

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

It’s my per­sonal opin­ion that some of the absolute best sto­ry­tellers on the planet today work for Pixar. Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant is eas­ily my favorite tra­di­tion­ally ani­mated film. And now, I think Up, the lat­est Pixar mas­ter­piece, has man­aged to top all the films that came before it.

I’m rarely as touched and thrilled by an expe­ri­ence as I am by watch­ing their movies.

  1. Writing doesn’t have to be YA, or for Adults. It can be both.

    The book world may have sto­ries divided down lines based on age and level of matu­rity, but the line between enter­tain­ment for adults and enter­tain­ment for younger chil­dren has never been as blurred as it has been by Pixar’s films. It’s indis­putable that their films are pop­u­lar with chil­dren. The sheer vol­ume of Nemo mer­chan­dise I see to this day backs up that asser­tion. At the aquar­ium, no kid could see the fish from that film with­out shout­ing out their names. “Look mommy, Dory!” I lis­tend to vari­a­tions of this for two hours.

    I think Pixar is the very model of fam­ily entertainment–films that can be enjoyed by every­one. And the more I think about it, the more I real­ize that much of chil­dren or YA lit­er­a­ture is the same way. There’s a kind of sub­con­cious stigma for adults read­ing YA fic­tion in my expe­ri­ence. I saw this often when Harry Potter was pop­u­lar. Some could not get past the idea that “Harry Potter is for kids.” It’s not. It’s for peo­ple who enjoy sto­ries. Just like Pixar’s films. I have a lot of respect for some­one who can tell a story so broadly appeal­ing, and per­son­ally, I want to learn how to do it too.

  2. Don’t Be Afraid to Put Heavy Stuff in a Light-​​Hearted Story

    This les­son has never been dri­ven home so well as by Up. The pro­tag­o­nist is a wid­ower, and we spend the first 20 min­utes get­ting to know his free-​​spirited wife. We see their lives pass before our eyes, and when she passes, we feel it deeply. I had a hard time keep­ing my eyes dry, I admit it.

    Funny with­out bite is like a fluffy cake. It lacks sub­stance and grav­ity. The under­tones cre­ated by the loss of a loved one, absen­tee fathers, and lifes not lived, those are the things that take an enjoy­able story from being fun but for­get­table to being great and unfor­get­table. Make us laugh. Make us cry. Make us laugh and cry in the same breath. If Pixar can do it, we can do it in our sto­ries and nov­els too.

  3. A character’s first inter­ac­tions can often tell you every­thing you need to know about them.

    In Wall-​​E, the first inter­ac­tions with another crea­ture we see are between the robot and a cock­roach. Does Wall-​​E smash the bug, dis­gusted? Of course not. He befriends it. The essence of his char­ac­ter is revealed in that sim­ple scene, and we fall for him.

    Pixar’s char­ac­ters appear­ances often reflect their per­son­al­ity, some­thing that can­not so eas­ily be done in fic­tion itself. But it’s not just their appear­ance. Watch each one of the films. In a few brief moments, we learn that Marlin will do any­thing for Nemo, that Woody is a leader and likes help­ing other toys, that Mr. Incredible is a bit full of him­self and dis­mis­sive of oth­ers, but loves his wife, and then, his fam­ily, very much, and that Remy loves food. Often, the cen­tral con­flict of the story arises from this char­ac­ter­i­za­tion as well. Wall-​​E needs to love some­one, and fol­lows EVE into space itself. Woody butts heads with Buzz. Mr. Incredible makes his own arch-​​nemesis because of his rude­ness. And so on.

  4. The work is found in the process of rewrit­ing. Also, write for yourself.

    In this inter­view with some of Pixar’s writ­ers, a cou­ple of com­ments really struck home with me, align­ing with things I had noticed from watch­ing the Behind-​​the-​​Scenes extras on their DVDs. Pixar doesn’t do focus groups. They write what they love. And they rewrite and rewrite until they get it the way they want. The story often changes dra­mat­i­cally in the course of revi­sions. Sometimes, we get obsessed with our first drafts, and our hopes rise or sink with the rel­a­tive suc­cess of it. I am par­tic­u­larly guilty of giv­ing up on sto­ries when the first draft doesn’t turn out as well as I imag­ined it.

  5. Amazing char­ac­ters can be born from the sim­plest of ideas.

    The gen­e­sis of the pro­tag­o­nist Walter in Up was a sim­ple sketch of a grumpy old man hold­ing a bal­loon. “Grumpy old man” is a hoary stereo­type, but stereo­types in and of them­selves aren’t wrong. It’s stop­ping with a stereo­type is a mis­take. From that sim­ple sketch, Pixar build a fully real­ized and appeal­ing char­ac­ter. They took some­one and made him both unpleas­ant and lov­able at the same time.

    Russell, seen right, is designed as a char­ac­ter to coun­ter­point every­thing about Walter. He’s round where Walter is angles. He’s kind and inno­cent and youth­ful. The con­tra­dic­tion of the essence of these two char­ac­ters gen­er­ates much of the humor and the con­flict to drive the story.