shout out sunday, 7.8.12.

It’s been four straight days of 100 degree weather, so the theme of this week’s SOS is “heat.”

Remember, if you want a shout-out, let me know!

Movies: Body Heat, directed by Lawrence Kasdan, 1981, USA.

Body Heat was one of the first R-rated movies I saw, and it had a tremendous impact upon me. As kids we used to go to the video rental section of the supermarket (this was before Blockbuster - I’m aging myself here), and we’d always stray towards the cartoons and science fiction like Space Camp and E.T.. But one day we went to the store with one of my sister’s friends, who was 18, and she was cool and let us pick out R-rated films to see. We picked out two films: James Cameron’s Terminator and Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat. Our lives were forever changed after that.

While at that time I was familiar with nudity (I lived in a Hindu household with statues of gods and goddesses that were topless, so breasts were never a foreign thing to me), I had never seen sex onscreen. Sure, there was the garden variety smooching on network television, but I’d never seen two people, y’know, go at it. I remember seeing Body Heat and having my jaw drop to the floor. One for Kathleen Turner’s insanely gorgeous everything and the other for the sheer raw power of the film, its actors, and its environment. I was too young to understand the dark nature of the crime noir genre, nor did I have the ability to process the film from a filmmaking standpoint, but what I always remembered was the film’s depiction of heat. Tanned bodies glistened with carnal sweat, everything in the world was perpetually saturated, and the temperature, both literally and metaphorically, was always at a boiling point. Watching Body Heat felt like standing in the middle of a hot and humid bayou with a scorchingly beautiful girl running her hand up your thigh.

When bodies melt into one.

I saw the film again almost fifteen years later, and while the intensity of heat remained the same as when I was a kid, I really began to appreciate the film’s cinematic beauty. It’s a wicked script, staying very true to the rules of noir, populated by nary a single trustworthy character. It’s a fantastic slice of American filmmaking at its best, from a time when major studios and actors were unafraid to go to some very dark and demented places, and when mainstream audiences rewarded these bold filmmakers with their patronage. A must see.

Music: Red Zone by DJ RASHAD.

Hot summer days in Chicago means a lot of things - days at the beach, music festivals, hot dogs and italian beef, and JUKING. While Chicago is often noted for its blues and jazz roots, often overlooked is its contribution to global dance culture. Chicago was the birthplace of house music - in 1984 Jesse Saunders signaled the death of disco with the release of his single “On and On” which featured a mesmerizing 4/4 beat and elements that sounded more like Kraftwerk than Donna Summer. House music exploded thereafter, providing the roots of American dance and pop music. With the rise of hip-hop and European techno, house music saw a precipitous declined, and the along with it went the electronic music scene of Chicago.

Until recently however when a group of young musicians in Chicago banded together and started creating music for new form of dance that was emerging on the South Side. This was a highly technical and complex form of hip-hop dancing called ‘footwork,’ and it needed music that was rickety and pounding, sounds that could at the time only be found in classic Detroit techno and European IDM. These elements were combined and Juke was born, and it’s the hottest thing going in the dance world. A weekend on the South Side is filled with arcane electronic sounds bumping from pop-up dance clubs where kids battle it out. It’s aggressive, chaotic and bassy as fuck. Chicago’s music has always been rooted in house music, but with talents like DJ Rashad blowing up globally, the city’s poised to reclaim its title as the electronic music capital of the world. And that’s not hyperbole or me trying to represent - you need to see it for yourself. Shit is hot.

Funding: Consideration, a feature by V Prasad.

Prasad is an old friend who’s one of the most insanely talented writers that I know. When he’s not writing brilliant produced scripts he’s teaching screenwriting in the film program at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Consideration marks his maiden venture as a director, and it’s a poignant mix of the realities that many students face in their struggles to pay for college. It’s about a young woman who finds a website that links female students to “sugar daddys” who help pay for college. Now I haven’t read 50 Shades of Grey but knowing Prasad this film won’t be anything like it, as he’s a very sensible and sensitive filmmaker. Please show him some support!

Contribute to the Consideration Kickstarter campaign HERE.

Trailers: Wu-Tang Vs. The Golden Phoenix, directed by RZA.

RZA’s got the incredible looking The Man With the Iron Fists coming out, but this is the movie I really want him to make. I’ll have to be happy with this trailer. Nah, fuck it. Bring on the Iron Fists!

Blogs / websites worth checking out (with Twitter links, if available):

What’s On Earth, a climate change blog by NASA..

All this heat combined with the freakishly mild winter further reinforces the fact that climate change and global warming is very real, and we’re to blame for it. This site by the good people at NASA - who are probably the foremost authorities on our atmosphere - have been running an amazing blog resource for all things climate change. As with most government websites its horribly under publicized, but that doesn’t make it any less amazing. Required knowledge, and easy to digest.

The Daily Otter.

When I’ve had a rough day in scorching heat, nothing cools me down like seeing a sea otter play in the water. I’ve been making a daily stop on this blog for almost a year now, and it never lets me down.

Ice Cream Geek.

The perfect cure for blistering heat, this is a fantastic blog that serves as an easy-to-follow guide to make ice cream, gelato and sorbets at home. Some weird stuff too, like Guinness ice cream!

Remember, if you want to get a shout out, you gotta let me know!

Shout Out Sunday Archive:

June 24, 2012
June 10, 2012
June 3, 2012
May 20, 2012
May 6, 2012
April 29, 2012
April 22, 2012
April 15, 2012
April 8, 2012
April 1, 2012
March 25, 2012
March 18, 2012
March 11, 2012
March 4, 2012
February 26, 2012
February 19, 2012

Hot Topics: ‘The Social Network’ - Round Two, and the Bechdel Test.

So I saw The Social Network again, this time with the new found perspective gained from reader comments and emails from my first viewing of the film. I have to say that you guys are incredibly observant, and I stand corrected in my beliefs. I see Aaron Sorkin’s point as to being true to the moment, and showing the uglier side of men and women in that sphere, at that time. My objections to the portrayal of women in the film are changed, and I love the film all the more, but my viewpoint on the portrayal of women in film overall remains steadfast.

The screenplay I am writing now, plus the treatment of Paul Pope’s graphic novel and Lilith all are woman-centric stories and films, and I always make sure I am staying true to the medium by running my stories through the famous Bechdel Test. If you’re not familiar with the test, it was conceived by writer / cartoonist Alison Bechdel (who did the shatteringly brilliant book Fun Home) as a way to determine if a story / film was really being told in fairness to women. The four rules of the test are simple:

1) There must be at least two women in the story.

2) Those two women must have names.

3) The women must talk to each other.

4) The conversation must be about something other than a man.

Seems simple enough, but I was shocked to find out how many movies failed the test. And it’s not required that every movie pass the test (The Social Network fails it miserably, but as I now know, that’s the point of the movie) and if the movie doesn’t pass the test it doesn’t mean it’s a bad film. Not at all. (There Will Be Blood fails it completely, but if you substitute men for the role of women in the Bechdel Test, then There Will Be Blood is a full on bromance.)

Well done, Brother Plainview.

But I do think the Bechdel Test is a subtle step towards equality in media, and I do think filmmakers and writers should be mindful of it. Stories needn’t be altered to fit it, but if someone is consciously making a film with purportedly “strong, independent” women characters, then I think the Bechdel Test must be applied. Lilith, thankfully, passes the test, albeit just barely.

My wife jokes with me that I write films for women like a desperate nerd trying too hard to get laid (that’s why I love my wife so - her refreshingly crushing honesty), and I’m unapologetic in my passion for women and my desire to portray them on screen. I do admire women, but not blindly so, or for the sake of political correctness. I’m fascinated by women in the same way that James Cameron is, as he’s consistently focused his stories on the inherent power of women - socially, biologically, sexually and politically. Aliens passes the Bechdel Test, and Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley is a character that I love, a real flesh-and-blood woman on film. I admire Ripley as much as I detest a woman like Ann Coulter (hey - Alien 5: Ripley vs. Coulter - I’d buy that ticket), but as much as I hate Coulter, I’m fascinated by her and the likes of her (Sarah Palin, Nikki Haley, Michele Malkin, etc.). These women are using their femininity as a weapon, and while I detest everything they stand for, it makes for a fascinating study of identity, and the idea that these women understand full and well as to how their male counterparts and voters perceive them. I would do a Bob Roberts, Wag the Dog or a Bulworth with a Palin / Coulter-esque woman at the center of it in a heartbeat.

In fact I’ll jot that idea down right now.

New ‘Deadbeat’ post, “screenplay vs. novel”

Please check out my new DEADBEAT writing blog post, as I answer a reader’s question on how to decide between writing a screenplay versus writing a novel.

http://deadbeatwriter.tumblr.com/post/1406536008/how-do-you-make-the-decision-to-write-a-novel-vs-a

Again, if you like what you’re seeing in DEADBEAT, please reblog this, follow the blog, and spread the word.

Thanks!

peace,
sridhar.

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Hot Topic: Judging the Audience.

It’s become an unfortunate commonplace amongst independent filmmakers to judge the American viewing audience as “stupid” or “brainless.” Armed with the box-office data of films like Wild Hogs and Grown Ups, and conversely the average performance of well-made indies such as Winter’s Bone, Restrepo and even The Hurt Locker , the conclusion amongst independent filmmakers is that the American viewing audience doesn’t want to see challenging, thought provoking cinema. They’d rather go to the theaters and shut their brains off, whereas audiences in Europe and Asia are more open to seeing challenging cinema.

These are generalizations, and there’s a lot more at play than we know, and a lot of it has to do with the finance of films, and the ability to recoup on a large investment.

According to the Motion Pictures Association of America, the cost of the average Hollywood film is a little above $60 million, and the average summer “tentpole” blockbuster is now averaging $197.1 million to produce. This does not include P&A costs of distribution, which is now equivalent to the budget of the film, if not more. So for a $200 million film to break even, it is generally assumed that it has to do about $600 million in the global boxoffice. That’s a lot of tickets to sell.

Now put yourself in the shoes of an executive or a producer. Faced with such a huge expense, what is the most surefire way to recoup? Find a property that has a built-in audience (Twilight, The Lord of the Rings or any of the comic book films) or bank on a star that has historically drawn large box office, and place him (rarely her, unless you’re Angelina Jolie) in a profitable genre such as action or an effects-driven film, or a slapstick family comedy.

Some might argue that those films are eye candy only, that there’s no substance to them and they only appeal to the lowest common denominator as a target audience. This is where we go wrong in our analysis of the audience. The audience is not the lowest common denominator, rather the content that the studios are providing them is. Why do studios do this?

Because, as aforementioned, there’s a lot of money that has to be recovered, and the only way to do that is to reach as many people as possible, across the globe, leaving no stone unturned. So how do you get a middle class man in Mississippi and a working woman in Beijing to watch the same film? You give them something they can both identify with. Slapstick comedy, explosions and Maxim Magazine brand sex doesn’t have a cultural filter, they are things that everyone can connect to, regardless of education, language, or cultural beliefs.

Conversely, if we make an independent film about the authentic struggle of Mississippi fish farmers, or the burgeoning heavy metal music scene in Mumbai, chances are that the working woman in Beijing probably won’t see either. Not because she is unintelligent, but rather there’s nothing there she can connect with. But Transformers? Or for that matter any Michael Bay film? Sure, it’s not art, but it’s entertaining, and she can understand it from beginning to end.

As a global export, it’s essentially this:

Versus this:

From a business standpoint, which would you export? Be honest, and know that it has nothing to do with race or culture. It’s about selling fantasy over reality.

The fact of the matter is that when we seek the widest audience possible, the content of the film has to drop to such basic generalizations and caricatures for the purpose of a global audience being able to connect to it. Independent filmmakers might call this “dumbing down” a film, but a film studio calls it making a universally applicable product. And the studios make a lot of money doing it, because that’s their job, which is to make money, because they are publicly traded companies whose shareholders demand value creation every financial quarter.

So it’s not the audience who is stupid, rather they’ve been fed such universally banal movies for the past twenty years and that’s what they’ve come to expect. The film industry created this monster, and they’ve extracted every possible dollar out of an audience that simply doesn’t know what else is out there. Cue 3D as the next universal sensory experience, and another huge payday for Hollywood. They’re not committing any crimes, nor are they taking advantage of the audience, seeing them as a mass global entity and not as cultural beings. They’re just putting a product out on the market that everyone in the world can get something out of, even if it’s fleeting. Sort of like an iPad.

But the bigger problem is the cost of films, and the expectations of the market for larger profits every quarter. Once upon a time in Hollywood, a major film used to cost about $9-12 million to make, and if that film made $20 million, it would be declared a major success. Lower-budget films like The Deer Hunter, Easy Rider or All the President’s Men were successful staples of the 70s, which by my personal observation, was the greatest era of American filmmaking.

That was before Jaws and Star Wars, films that showed Wall Street the awesome earning potential of creating mass entertainment. Films became geared towards bringing in bigger wider audiences with the lure of spectacle over content (which, in defense of Spielberg, his films always had a beating heart behind them, don’t know what happened to Lucas with the prequels, though). Michael Ovitz, founder of the Creative Artists Agency (CAA), started creating “package deals” built around a set of metrics that equated star power with box-office earnings. As a result, star salaries skyrocketed, and so did the overall cost of production.

It’s a simple ratio: the higher the cost of production, the more general a film has to become. We can return to a golden era of cinema if we conscientiously strive to bring down the cost of production, which will put less pressure on the producer because the recoup is far less. There’s no reason why, in this age of technology, why a good studio blockbuster film cannot be made for $20-25 million. The star system has proven to wane (Tom Cruise’s Knight and Day and Matt Damon’s The Green Zone have defied their salaries) and films that have been amazingly successful in the past five years have done so because of the craft of the writer and director (see the post on Pixar). Producers need to be tough in negotiating star salaries, otherwise risks have to be taken on newer acting talent that can deliver a powerful story. James Cameron knew this all along.

Lastly, the idea that European audiences are far smarter than American audiences, by virtue of the films that Europe creates, is a fallacy. Europe makes incredibly challenging and daring cinema because they have governments that regularly support and fund art. These are funds that are provided to modest budgeted projects without the expectation of a box office return, rather it is an investment into the preservation and development of culture.The fact that the United States is the world’s largest exporter of media, and yet we have not a single viable department of culture in our government is reprehensible. The National Endowment of the Arts is a whispering ghost of an institution, and Public Television essentially is the non-cable iteration of the BBC. If the United States had a lottery-funded film commission that empowered new voices, we’d make films as powerful and challenging as our European brethren. Until that lottery fund arrives, we’ll have to work with withering independent finance and Sundance, and we’ll have to consume the flavorless output of the major studios. It’s not by choice, rather it is necessity.

Overlooked Oscars.

As we enter the final week before the Oscars, I’d like to take some time out from the film to partake in the great American tradition of pontificating on the subject of “if I picked the Oscars…”

I have to admit that because of my business travel, I haven’t really had the opportunity to see that many films this year, and I find myself playing catch-up with DVDs. But I have seen some exceptional films this year, many of which have been completely overlooked by the Academy.

But let me first disclose that I am in the party of people who think that awards shows are exercises in vanity and marketing, and that they certainly exist to promote hard-to-sell films or DVD sales. It’s political and economical, yes, but I’d also be lying if I said I didn’t want to be invited to the Academy Awards or be appreciated by my colleagues. There are categories that have no connection to marketing, categories like live-action and animated shorts (of which a colleague of mine, Gregg Helvey, is nominated for his short film KAVI - go Gregg!) and technical awards which never receive any air-time but are essential to the growth and development of the industry. I understand why the Academy Awards exist, and I think they should continue to exist. The People’s Choice Awards, on the other hand…

But I digress. Let’s cut to the chase.

Let’s start with the locks. For Best Supporting Actor I think it’s universally accepted that Christoph Walz should and will win for his masterful turn as Col. Landa in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. You won’t hear any argument from me. Also, Best Visual Effects is a shoo-in for Avatar. I would have said District 9 had far more compelling visual effects than Avatar because I felt the creatures in District 9 showed genuine, authentic emotion, but Avatar trumps it in that Cameron & Co. created an entire new 3D technology that, for better or worse, transformed our industry. And plus it’s James Cameron. I also think Mo’Nique has it wrapped up for Precious, although I feel Melanie Laurent deserved a nomination for her turn in Inglorious Basterds. She simply owned the screen whenever she was on. And hands down, the best animated film of the year was Up.

And now the debatable and overlooked:

Best Actor: all signs point to Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, which I have not seen and by boxoffice accounts not many others have seen either. I’m sure he’s brilliant in it. But I have three more candidates whom I feel should have been nominated, and one of those who should have won. I would have nominated Sam Rockwell for his double performance in Moon, a highly nuanced and very difficult feat. Rockwell carried the entire film on his shoulders, and to pull off a science fiction film requires an actor who can sell the humanity and soul of the character to the audience so that they can buy into the audacity of the plot. Rockwell accomplished this big-time. I can also say the same of Tom Hardy’s performance in the criminally underseen film Bronson. Hardy is both terrifying and charismatic, a combination that is very difficult to pull off without veering into pantomime. His is a career-defining performance.

But I would give the Best Actor award to Michael Fassbender for his portrayal of Irish republican hunger striker Bobby Sands in Steve McQueen’s Hunger. Fassbender’s performance has all the makings of legendary role - physical transformation and bodily disregard, passion, subtlety, truthfulness, and above everything else, honesty. Few actors can go the limits to what Fassbender accomplished, and he deserves far more recognition for his brave and fearless performance.

Best Actress: Many folks are saying this is Sandra Bullock’s year and as a person, I’d be happy for her to win. As an actress, I feel she turned in a one-note performance that lacked any kind of depth or complexity. The actress that did go there was Katie Jarvis in Andrea Arnold’s blistering Fish Tank. Like Bridges in Crazy Heart, this is a performance that few people have seen, but fans of acting and performance must seek out. Jarvis toes the line of self-destruction and hope so deftly, she allows the audience to go on her journey with her with compassion and exposing her naked, raw nerves. It’s one of those performances that comes along every five to ten years, and it is deserving of the highest praise and honors.

Best Cinematography: Two of the most overlooked efforts in cinematography were never even in the running at this year’s Oscars, but they are visual achievements that really do deserve higher praise. The first is Darius Khondji’s work in Stephen Frears’ Cheri, where Khondji draws upon the great works of French Impressionism to create a shimmering tableau of light and color. The film is an absolute visual feast, and the work of a great cinematographer working at the height of his creative powers. But this year’s highest praise should go towards Lance Acord for his work in Spike Jones’ Where the Wild Things Are. Unlike Avatar I felt Where the Wild Things Are was the true seamless amalgamation of digital and practical photography, and Acord infused a beautiful, organic warmth to the film. Where in Avatar I felt I was watching technical wizardry at work, in Where the Wild Things Are I never once thought about “how did they do that,” I was completely absorbed into the beautiful, stunning and sad landscape. The film and Acord’s deft wielding of light and camera is the most overlooked achievement of 2009.

Best Director: I want Kathryn Bigelow to win this, not because she is a woman who has for many years been been thrown under the bus with the assumption that her greatness as an action director is due to her association with james Cameron, but because she is one of the finest directors working today. But I put forth an unlikely contender, and that is Pete Docter for directing Up. Animation has never gotten its fair due as a director’s medium, but if James Cameron can get nominated for Avatar, which is essentially an animated film, then Docter deserves all praise for Up. I challenge anyone to put together a more affecting sequence than the first 20 minutes of Up, which shows an emotional complexity that confounds, stabs, caresses and ultimately lets go. It’s a masterful piece of work, rivaled only by the first 20 minutes of Inglorious Basterds, to which I owe much of its greatness to Christoph Walz. Docter managed every emotional beat and frame of Up with utmost sincerity and with the skill of a master craftsman, and he produced a work of art in the process.

Best Picture: The Hurt Locker rightfully deserves this title, but there was one film which was overlooked for this honor, and I can’t blame the Academy for its misstep, largely because the film hasn’t been seen by anyone except those on the festival circuit.

The film is Munyurangabo, directed by Lee Issac Chung. The film deals with the genocide in Rwanda through the perspective of two young, adolescent boys. The film builds its story in reverse order as we slowly begin to realize why these boys are making a cross-country trek. This is a revelatory story of many of the issues and mores of society today, told without the liberal white-guilt soapbox of Hollywood (and I say this as a bleeding-heart liberal myself), and told with unflinching honesty and objectiveness. Rare is the film that simply happens, a film that unfolds so naturally and effortlessly on screen. It is a real achievement, and worthy of the highest honor in the industry.

I know it’s presumptuous of me to award the best picture to a film that no one has seen. It’s not my being fancy-shmancy “oh look at this obscure little indie gem that I found,” rather it is simply the best film that I saw last year, and I saw it by chance, or else I would have never know it even existed. But it is on DVD and it is available for anyone to see, and I strongly urge anyone who loves or is involved in cinema to partake in what the film has to offer. It may also seem that in this post I’ve been bagging on Avatar and this is a half-truth; I am in awe of the film’s achievements from a tech standpoint, but I feel it fails in accomplishing the fundamental cornerstone of why movies are made, which is to tell a compelling story. Avatar is an experience, not a tale. Munyurangabo is, like Avatar, a peephole into a world unseen, an unfamiliar culture, a species at war, and above all, it has a beating heart.

You can find the film here: http://www.amazon.com/Munyurangabo-Jeff-Rutagengwa-as/dp/B0023VM7AU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1267545585&sr=8-1