Sex Doesn't Sell--in movies

According to a "ground-breaking" article by CNN, they've discovered that sex doesn't necessarily sell when it comes to movies. This is one of those few articles that is missing an appropriate "no duh" at the end of it.

This is an example of one of those stories that gets written because someone has taken a slogan and then decided that the evidence doesn't match the wordage of the slogan itself, mainly because the slogan is just that, a slogan. Also, the slogan is appropriate to a completely different vehicle, and the reporters are trying to play the game of "lookie what we found!" when in reality they found that their lack of research equates to a stupid story.

So, why do people say "sex sells" if it doesn't sell in movies? Because it sells in advertising. That's where the wordage gets the most play. Beer commercials are a great example. Guys drink beer, girls show up wearing almost no clothing, and then profit! Girl wears sexy lingerie, other women watching the commercial see it and then go out and buy lingerie expecting to be as sexy as she is, and then profit! Okay, the second example is an example of misleading advertising (as was the first) mainly because I think most of those commercials are designed for guys who then turn to their girlfriends/wives and then try to get them to wear the sexy lingerie, and then somehow profit entails, but the results don't somehow come out the same.

And that's the beauty of sex sells advertisement. Almost always it creates a fantasy that is unattainable for all but women who happen to be sexy lingerie models. Guys aren't going to end up with her. Sorry, but she's dating some rock star that makes gazillions of dollars and wouldn't give you the time of day. Average women aren't going to look like her; let's face it...there's a reason she makes millions of dollars to pose in her underwear.

Which brings us back to the original topic, and that's sex sells imagination in movies. When does it ever sell? Well, I can think of a few examples. "Mr and Mrs Smith" was a movie that was definitely a sex sells kind of movie. It had two of the hottest stars in movies, both sexy to people of practically both genders interchangeably, and that sold that movie well. I'd venture that Transformers benefited from several sexy stars, although I personally never liked the movie or the stars of it, but I'm commenting on movie trends, not on my own wants and desires. If this was about my own wants and desires, every movie would have Shania Twain running around in lingerie. Come to think of it, every movie with Shania Twain in it regardless would improve 90 percent of the movies regardless of what she was wearing. And she could sing the soundtrack, too. Hmm, must consider this for a future post and column.

But I digress....


Some other movies that do well with sex selling in their movies are, well, for simplicity, porn. I mean, let's face it. If you are interested in sex in movies, then you really can't go any simpler than that. So, why don't more guys just watch porn instead of watch movies that are sexually suggestive? Well, if the guy wants to get his girlfriend/wife to watch it, well, that's about as close as he's going to get.

But the point is that this article that CNN wrote is more about trying to dislodge a theory that no one is making. I haven't gone to a movie yet because I was interested in a sexual theme of the movie, ever. I've seen some pretty damn sexy movies over the years, but I went to see them because of some other reason. So the idea that sex sells is really limited to advertising and porn. I think the enlightened people just don't want to admit it. To make a movie that is nothing but sex is really either making a porn movie or a soft porn movie, and anyone who has watched the latter has begged for that two hours back in their life.

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Why Netflix often drives me nuts

A short time ago, Netflix ran a contest to find the best algorithm to help customers with movie recommendations. The American Statistical Association (ASA) recently declared that one of its team of statisticians came up with the winning formula. Great for them. Unfortunately, Netflix still sucks when it comes to predicting the movies I might like.

The reason? Well, one movie is not like every other movie that does the same sort of gimmick. One of the constant suggestions is crap that wants to be the movie Clerks. Okay, Clerks was great. Every wannabe Clerks movie is not. Stop recommending that trash to me.

Little Miss Sunshine was a cute movie. I liked it. That does NOT mean that ever avant garde movie that has appeared after that movie is one I'm going to like. Just because it was fielded at the Sundance Film Festival doesn't mean I'm going to like it. Stop recommending this trash to me, Netflix. Just because some movie actress decided to make a $15,000 movie doesn't mean I'm going to like it. Nor does it mean it's JUST LIKE movies I might have liked in the past.

So far, Netflix is broken when it comes to suggestions. I don't even use their suggestions anymore. I look for movies I want to watch based on my own desires. I wish it wasn't that way because I love Netflix, just not their suggestions.

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The problems with anonymity, the Internet and being unknown

A couple of stories came across my desk today that I found to be important. By the way, I don't really have a desk where stories come across it, or even a place where something like that would ever happen. I'm lucky if I can find a story after an exhaustive search on the Internet. But it sure sounds good saying it because I like to think I'm as important as those big guys that have stories that come across their desks. Anyway, so this series of stories came across my big, Oak desk today, forcing me to push aside my security briefings from the President so I could focus on them. What? It could happen. Really. Anyway...

The first of the stories was about a young woman who got outed on the Internet by telling all of her blog fans that she was who she was. We all know the story: Boy meets girl. Girl meets alien. Alien destroys most of Manhattan before we find out it was really just looking for a gas station. Oh wait, different story. Sorry. In this story, here, Virginia Montanez, was writing a blog that criticized the Mayor of Pittsburgh. People were starting to figure out who she was, so she outed herself to avoid having someone else out her first. Boy, she showed them! And then her job fired her. Turns out she worked for a nonprofit that probably didn't like being seen as the employers of someone who made fun of the mayor, and well, we know how that sort of thing works out.

Yesterday, after Kat and I finished fighting off ninjas that were trying to destroy Union City, we went to see the movie Julie and Julia. It was a cute movie about a young woman who decides to cook her way through Julia Child's famous cook book. I won't get into the details to avoid ruining the movie for you, but at some point the aliens do fight back and we end up with a great cliffhanger where evil supermonkeys save Paris by stopping the evil Dr. Massachusetts. Or something like that. Anyway, the movie itself was actually pretty good, but something about it really bothered me. It's based on a true story, from the perspective of the young woman who wrote the book/screenplay, and what bothers me is that she was an unsuccessful writer who couldn't get her book published and gave up on writing, but then somehow made it famous by writing a blog about cooking.

Now, I've been writing a blog for years now, and aside from two other people, my stuffed animals are the only ones who read it, and that's just what they tell me to avoid an awkward evening alone with me when I confront them about it. Part of the joke of the movie is how only her mother reads her blog, but then out of nowhere, suddenly she's got the most successful blog since Hitler blogged about his trip across Europe in the early 1940s.

How does this happen? Why do some people have the most popular blogs on the planet, yet the rest of us can't seem to get a reader even if we kidnap people and put them in front of a computer that only goes to my blog with its browser? Believe me. I tried it, and somehow they managed to find lesbian porn instead of my site, and I fixed the computer to ONLY go to my site. I just don't understand.

So, one of the things that bothered me was that the moral of the story seems to be that if you can't get published as a regular writer, do something outrageous and ridiculous, blog about it, and then you'll have a writing career. Does anyone else have a problem with that? I ask that figuratively because I realize that my stuffed animals are the only ones reading, and they just stare blankly, like they are too cool to give an answer of their own. Stupid stuffed animals and their "I'm better than you are" airs they put on!

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Heath Ledger and the Concept of Political Projective Recollections

By now, most of the world knows Heath Ledger won the supporting-actor Academy Award for his portrayal of the Joker in the blockbuster "The Dark Knight." Ever since his overdose of prescription drugs last year, the hype behind Ledger's portrayal had all but guaranteed his receipt of the Oscar. It was such a given that if he had not won, I could imagine large groups of people in "Knight's Tale" garb marching on the battlements of Academy Awards Headquarters and reinacting the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England.

So, I guess you're anxiously anticipating my agreement or disagreement with this decision, like a television junky waiting on another episode of a show cancelled for lack of ratings. Well, unlike the networks, I am not here to disappoint. Just to confuse.

You see, I think he definitely deserved the Academy Award but like John Kerry who was for it before he was against it, I also think he shouldn't have received it. I know it's blasphemous to say this, but if he never died, I doubt the Academy ever would have taken him seriously.

Unfortunately, that's how the Academy is every year. Remember Lord of the Rings? How about Star Wars or any other superhero movie or animated film?

Let's start with the obvious, Lord of the Rings, which received practically every Oscar it was nominated for after its third installment. Not one actor, actress, supporting actor or actress was even nominated. So many great performances. No recognition. Rewind two years to the first installment when Sir Ian McKellan was nominated for his brilliant portrayal as Gandalf. Instead, the award was won by Jim Broadbent in "Iris". To completely rub it in that year, the best original song should have been Enya's "May It Be" from Lord of the Rings, if not for the fact that Enya had to write the verses in actual Elvish. Instead, Randy Newman got it as one of those "we really should have awarded you years ago" nods for "If I Didn't Have You" from "Monsters, Inc.", a song I should point out that was sung at the Academy Awards by wannabe Muppets.

Star Wars? Special effects, good. Music, good. Costumes and make-up, good. Real movie awards? Sorry, the Academy doesn't reward science fiction.

Put up any superhero film, and the Academy scoffs at it. You can get one of the techie awards, but none of the serious ones.

Animated films? That Wall-E was not even considered in anything but the children's table is a sign of this process.

Which brings me back to superhero films. No one ever takes them seriously. That Heath Ledger was even nominated was amazing until you actually start to think about what happened.

I'd be willing to argue that Ledger might have received the nomination, but it was his death that cemented his award. And I completely understand those who disagree with me, saying he would have deserved it anyway. And I agree with them. But I also don't think he would have won. He would have achieved popular support from rabid fans, but little to no recognition from the Academy.

Before his death, I heard almost nothing about Ledger's Joker. There were a few comments here and there, but when he died a word of mouth campaign began that argued how great of a portrayal he had made. I watched the movie. He was that great. But how great he was perceived was a direct result of the word of mouth campaign that never abated. I personally believe a lot of the traffic that made its way to see this movie was because of the hype behind Ledger. The rest of the actors were great, too, but you heard nothing about them. Everything has been about Ledger.

So what does any of this have to do with politics, as is hinted at in this article's title? The answer is: Everything.

One of my major pet peeves with political science is the usage of bad science. The type of bad science I'm talking about here is where the "scientists" knows the results of a social phenomenon and then backtracks to pretend that outcome was predictive. They do it all of the time, and it drives me nuts. It's like watching the dollar drop 15% of its value and then writing a predictive paper that indicates that a year ago you could predict the dollar would drop 15%. No, you couldn't. You're armed with knowledge of the present that wasn't available in the past. It's the weakest type of science there is: Predicting what already happened. I like to call this process projective recollections. No, no one else calls it that, mainly because they generally don't have a problem with the situation.

Which brings me back to Heath Ledger. People say he would have won the Oscar regardless of whether or not he died. That is a projective recollection. He won, so therefore lazy scientists predict he would win based on already knowing he did.

But we're dealing with untested variables here. What if he had not died? Would word of mouth have spread? Would people have cared as much as they did about Ledger winning? Would the Academy award a still-living actor with their highest achievement for playing a comic book supervillain? It didn't happen for the many fine actors before him. And it didn't happen for Jack Nicholson, who played the exact same part as Ledger in a role that critics defined as one only Jack Nicholson could ever play.

It should at least give one reason to think.

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Tropic Thunder is a brilliant movie

I saw this the other day with Kat, and it was a great movie. Honestly. It takes a really critical look at movie stars and their self-centered Narcissism. Up until this year, I really wasn't that much of a Robert Downey, Jr. fan, but I am now. His portrayal of the drunk, self-tortured Iron Man was something I thought was just a wonderful fluke. His character in Tropic Thunder completely steals a movie that was so good that I never would have thought anyone could have stolen it.

The funny thing (well, one of many things) about Tropic Thunder is that there is this whole protest thing going on because Downey's character refers to Ben Stiller's character's previous role as "Simple Jack" by accusing him of having gone "Full Retard". Of course, the mentally-challenged corps have come out in droves to protest this usage, but the joke isn't even on them. The joke has nothing to do with the mentally-challenged, nor does it even make a slight at them by using the word "retard". The insult is waged at actors who play mentally-challenged characters, like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump, or Dustin Hoffman in Rainman, or even Sean Penn in Sam I Am (or something close to that). It's actually a brilliant criticism of actors and how they handle such roles. There's a lot of self-directed criticism in this movie that the main characters continue to use to poke fun at their own profession. Some of the ad libs in the movie are brilliant, and are done so well that you'd think it was originally written into a well-written script.

I highly recommend this movie.

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Star Wars and the Wrong Direction of Storytelling

Star Wars used to be a great franchise that told a great story that caused its fans to really examine and explore the ideas of good and evil. The first three movies (the original three) really took that exploration and exploded in a great way for all of the fans. Sure, good triumphed over evil, but evil was REALLY evil, and you knew it.

Then these three prequels came along that told the story of Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader), and to be honest, other than the moment where he becomes Vader, the three movies are really lame and pretty much destroy the very foundation of the mysticism behind Star Wars. The Force, an ever-present, omnipotent fabric of dimensional existence quickly gave way to a genetic defect (at least that's how they explained the Force with the young Anakin Skywalker..."he's got lots of mytowhoziwhats in his blood, which makes him the greatest potential jedi of all time"). And Anakin was just Luke Skywalker, Jr., except you knew there would be no redemption for this character; he would only have to get worse and more evil as the storyline continued. I had a really hard time "cheering" on the worst hero of science fiction history. I found his brooding, passive-aggressive disposition to want me to learn how to be a jedi just so I could kick his complaining ass.

Now, a new movie is being released as a cartoon, which is supposed to "fill in the gap" called the Clone Wars. I'm sorry, but I don't really feel there's much of a gap here. I don't really care about the Clone Wars. And I really don't care about a series where Anakin Skywalker is to be seen as the "hope" of the Republic. I'm sorry, but Anakin is the death of the Republic; no amount of cartooning is going to make him into the good guy again, no matter what time line they interject this story.

Star Wars actually has a rich, mystical history that needs to be explored, but they keep coming back to this overdone storyline. I don't care anymore about Darth Vader. There is a whole Knights of the Old Republic era that is hinted at in the series, and has been seriously developed in lots of the Star Wars media (not the movies). The birth of the Sith sounds like so much more interesting than brooding action heroes who complain about their girlfriends. Honestly.

When I was doing the old computer game work, there was a project that was started at Lucas Arts that never really saw the dawn of light, but it should have. It was about a rebellious colonel during the Star Wars era (think "Empire Strikes Back" time) that was fighting a mysterious revolution against the empire during this time. There was so much rich information coming from this particular thread, and then it just died away so that we could focus on brooding, complaining young jedi.

I regret that all we have to look forward to is a cartoon movie and a potential television series (cartoons) of the Clone Wars. What a horrible choice to develop. I would love to see something way prior to the whole Star Wars saga (like tens of thousands of years before), or hundreds of years AFTER Return of the Jedi. But instead, we'll get nothing but product placement shows and movies that will try to sell us a cute robot toy or stuffed ewok, or whatever stupid "in" toy that comes from the next kiddie series that sadly fills the gap that doesn't need filled.

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Indiana Jones and the Temple of Obscene Profits

I saw the new Indiana Jones movie, and let's just say that it wasn't the greatest movie I've ever seen. I'd place it #3 or 4 out of the four Indiana Jones movies (with 1 being the best, and 3 being second best). There were just so many continuity problems with the movie that I was starting to get frustrated with it.

Now, this movie is put out by two of the most dedicated men in movies (Lucas and Spielberg), so I was seriously surprised at some of the blatant problems in both the movie and the script. Some of the banter between characters was extremely contrived to the point of absurdity. There was one scene where Indiana and Co. are in a military vehicle CHASING after the evil Nazi woman (okay, she was really a Soviet Natasha secret agent, but she was played as a typical Nazi), with Indie saying something like "Catch her!" The camera then switches perspective, and now the evil Nazi woman is BEHIND them trying to catch up to them.

Some of the plot twists were so obvious that I wondered if they were supposed to be tricks that they were going to cleverly turn on us, but no, they weren't. They were just badly scripted plot points. (spoiler alert----> Hey, Indie, if a woman you haven't seen for twenty years has a twenty year old kid who is as free-spirited as you are, perhaps you should think a little bit about the origins of that kid, especially when his "father" is mentioned as someone REALLY ambiguous).

There was one throw-away line that I think was put into the movie for Lucas/Harrison Ford fans where Indiana says: "I got a bad feeling about this." Kind of takes ya back to the good ole' days of Hans Solo when he was coasting towards that moon ("that's no moon").

There was some good old fashioned beat em up action in the movie, which should always be expected from an Indiana Jones movie. There were a couple of references to the practically unwatched television series about Indiana Jones that someone not having watched that series would have caused a question of "when did Indiana Jones fight with Pancho Villa?" That was sometimes a problem with the movie. It expected you to have more knowledge of the insider stuff, yet the asides to those insider moments went so fast that you ended up having to think about it while other things were happening, and you'd miss something else.

It was good seeing Karen Allen again. She's still as cute and bubbly as she was in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. They also showed a picture of Indie's dad, Sean Connery, which made me wonder if Sir Sean got any actual money for having his picture in the movie, even though he, himself, didn't appear.

Two final comments:
1. This movie reminds me that we've pretty much run out of bad guys in movies these days. Nazis are overdone and too far removed from our reality. Terrorists are too present in today's reality that it makes it hard to use them. There is really no evil country that we have to present as the enemy, because even if there is one out there, we still want to sell tickets to people in that country, and you can't market a movie to Chinese people if the big bad enemy is China.
2. University of the Pacific shows up in the movie a few times. You can tell whenever you see Burns Tower, which is supposed to give people the idea that Indiana Jones teaches in some east coast Ivory Tower university. In reality, Burns Tower is in Stockton, California. I don't think they want to give the impression that Indiana Jones is teaching archaeology in the street crime capital of California.

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Michael Moore's "Sicko"

This semester I've been taking a graduate course on documentary film as political communication, so it's probably not surprising that Michael Moore has come up a few times in conversation. I've never really been a strong fan of Moore's but not because I disagree with him or think his methods are shady, but just because I've always felt that he sees too many things as black and white when I don't believe things ever really are.

Bowling for Columbine was a great movie, if you watched the movie as a process rather than as an argument. I came away from it with a couple of important points, although I wasn't completely sold on Moore's agenda. After it was over, I didn't have any desire for any more controls over guns. But I did come away from it with a new perspective on the culture of fear that exists within American society.

Now, Sicko was really interesting. I know there are claims made that are controversial, like Moorewatch claims that he cooks the numbers when he claims there are 50 million Americans uninsured (where Moorewatch calculates that the number is closer to 37 million, with around 9 million uninsured "non"-Americans who are in the US. What's really funny about criticisms like that one is that the movie has NOTHING to do with the uninsured of America. It's all about those who ARE insured, so who cares if it's 37 million, 50 million, or 250 million when that's not the topic being discussed?

The movie itself does point out that our system in the US is really screwed up. I've known that for years before seeing the movie. I know that this year I've spent so much money on co-pays to see specialists and my regular doctor that I'm close to being bankrupt right now. And I HAVE insurance. By the time the movie ended, I started thinking about learning French and just moving to France, because it is so obvious that their system cares a lot more about their people than ours does. I remember the nightmare I went through last summer just trying to get Kaiser Permanente to refer me to a specialist for my shoulder. It took an act of God, and my sister, to finally get something done about that.

So, the movie introduces a very interesting thing to think about. And that's the goal of a documentary. My class would argue that the goal is to persuade, but I'm starting to believe that's really not the contemporary goal. I think documentaries are designed to make us think. Used in conjunction with numerous devices, it may persuade, but I think in the beginning the goal of a documentary should be to introduce someone to the possibility that one's ideas are limited and in need of rethinking. And I think Sicko did that very well.

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Spiderpig

Okay, I'm going to come straight out and say that The Simpson's Movie was a great movie. A friend of mine took me to see it, as she felt I needed to get out of the house. If you've seen the trailer for this, you've probably heard Homer Simpson singing his song "Spiderpig", which is done to the tune of the old Spiderman cartoon. I chuckled a bit when I saw the trailer, and I thought it would be just a slightly amusing thing. Well, let's just say this is one of those movies where a lot of thought went into some very tiny details. I recommend that you watch the WHOLE thing because there are some moments to this movie where you just have to be there to experience it. I give it very high ratings.



Countdown: 364 days

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Babel

Let's just say that I haven't been a fan of too many recent movies. It's like the industry has gotten stupid and thinks all we want is trash-like drivel. So I had this in my Netflix que and decided to finally get around to watching it.

To begin with, it reminded me of the movie Lonestar, which is a brilliant collage of images that create a whole movie. This movie does the same thing, in a really powerful, yet touching way. I've watched a couple of other recent movies lately, and I have to say this is one of the few that makes my list of decent, really good movies. I just wish more movies would take chances like this one. There wasn't a scene that didn't belong or that didn't make you sit back and go, "wow."

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