Open Thread Posted by JP Stormcrow, 08 Jun 2007 04:03 pm

Open Thread (#12)

As I explained in my MOJ-mandated wrap-up on the previous Open Thread, I am somewhat “sported” out. But since this is an “Open” Thread have it at it; sports or whatever. … oh yes, Go Cavs! … just not expecting much there.

This D-Day week, I was recalling the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan. I found the overall movie uneven, but the initial sequence literally knocked me back in my seat and made me quickly reset my expectations for what was to follow. YouTube here. Was trying to think of other movies that accomplished that. Though it feels like you have always known it, the Kansas->Oz, color ->b/w cut in Wizard of Oz does this, as does the bone throw in 2001. The Stunt Man to some extent revolved around this effect. (Does it have a name?) Movies with “multiple” switches include David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, Time Bandits and Sleuth. The double hit of “Time Warp” and “Sweet Transvestite” in Rocky Horror work for me as well (I know there are a lot of “shocks” in horror films in general, but 1.) I am not a fan of the genre and 2.) Most do not recontextualize the whole film viewing experience for you.) Last I will mention is Marathon Man, where a seemingly comic car chase turns deadly, setting the stage for the more serious tone of the movie. (YouTube here, and actually I found this one quite unsettling in a negative way, but that may just have been because I saw it on a failing first date.)

Open away.

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Responses to “Open Thread (#12)”

  1. on 08 Jun 2007 at 5:01 pm 1. Oaktown Girl said …

    I found this one quite unsettling in a negative way, but that may just have been because I saw it on a failing first date.

    Oh. My. Astaroth. A good friend of mine tells the story of a first date he went on where the movie was so embarrassingly bad (and not in a B-movie or ironic sort of way that might have salvaged it even a little), that he says it literally ruined any future they might have had together. The movie was so horrifically bad and polluted their “space” so completely, neither could bear the thought of seeing the other one again, and they both knew it.

    The movie? It’s been a while, but I’m 99.9% sure it was Falling in Love.

  2. on 09 Jun 2007 at 1:01 am 2. The Constructivist said …

    Writing this from a computer cluster in Rikkyo University they have so far failed to kick me out of and staying at a capsule hotel tonight in Ikebukuro, so will have only sporadic internet access. But of course I’ve already blogged the first two rounds of the LPGA’s second major and hope to do the next two, too.

    I can top Oaktown Girl’s example. My first. date. ever. I decided to invite to Attack of the Killer Tomatos (or was it Tomatoes?). Within the first five minutes, rather than call the whole thing off, she suggested we go across campus to see Top Gun. Which was an improvement, if that can be believed. (OK, so I like Magnolia and that Philip K. Dick-inspired Time Cop-like one whose title I forget, but generally I hate Tom Cruise movies.) Oh, and we dated for four years and almost got engaged, but I got dumped during her first year of law school and mine of grad school (for obvious reasons!). So it was definitely a failed first date that only retroactively came to foreshadow anything at all.

    And on JP’s theme, what about The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense, which do that rethink everything that came before thing, in ways I failed to anticipate for the former and did for the latter? In terms of opening sequences, the first Star Wars movie (of course) did it for me. (Of the one JP mentions that I’ve seen, Time Bandits was my favorite and I never joined in on the annual family Wizard of Oz viewing–which holiday was it that it was always shown before in the days before VCRs?–because I found the former hilarious and the latter terrifying.)

    On a personal note, the tsuma and I saw our first movie–DVD of Pirates of the Caribbean 2, which she disliked and I tolerated (same reactions as to the first)–together in months two nights ago, but couldn’t get past the first 10 minutes of Click (which she chose!) because it activated all her anti-American allergies at once….

    Gotta go–reception starting soon–better be worth the 6000 yen!

  3. on 09 Jun 2007 at 9:54 am 3. black dog barking said …

    For me the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan was something I’d never before experienced from a film, beyond eye-opening. I felt Spielberg et al had broken into a new story-telling space, had put us viewers as close as we’d ever want to be to those beaches that June morning. Personally I found the sound track more disorienting, more subversive than the visuals.

    Don’t know how many have seen this (PhotoSynth demo at TED). I’ve lived long enough to see my favorite cinematic special effect, Rick Deckard’s photo viewer in Blade Runner, make it to real life. There’s a short ad at the beginning, the last 90 seconds are also advertisement. The Paper & Ink novel appears around 1:20.

  4. on 09 Jun 2007 at 10:35 am 4. JP Stormcrow said …

    Thinking about it, I realize that I have to some extent conflated surprising openings with sudden twists during the movie, but the common link is the abrupt change in viewer experience.

    Wrong movie choices can be uncomfortable in any number of ways not just on first dates. I am banned from getting to decide what movie to see at Christmas since I suggested Altman’s abominable Prêt-à-Porter (Ready to Wear). Another time I suggested Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia (great, like all of his stuff) to a colleague at work for when her father visited. She invited us along, so I got to sit there and squirm when Gray went on and on describing sexual practices in a Thai nightclub.

    And this reminded me that in this thread, MB reported that he had seen Eraserhead on a first date. (and scroll down to the bottom of that thread to see the MOJ learning how to make those html link dealios work on teh Internets.)

  5. on 09 Jun 2007 at 11:07 am 5. JP Stormcrow said …

    OT Japanese popular culture query for TC.

    My two boys are absolutely entranced right now with watching the TV show Monster via the Tubes - one said it was the most intense TV show he had ever seen. Was it a significant show in Japan?

  6. on 09 Jun 2007 at 12:24 pm 6. Oaktown Girl said …

    Well, there’s no Triple Crown possibility again this year, but there is a filly running, and I’m all about cheering for the filly. So, go Rags to Riches! Go, Go, Go!

    But does that linked story really need to have the headline “Battle of the Sexes”? It’s six colts and one filly. Is a win by one of the colts really a “victory” in the “Battle of the sexes?” Le sigh.

    TV coverages starts at 2pm Pac time and goes officially till 3:30. So I’m guess the actual start time for the race is 3:00 Pac time.

    In local baseball new, the A’s are in SF playing the Giants in inter league play. The added drama is that former A’s star and current traitor Barry Zito is on the mound for the Giants. So I’m hoping the A’s light his ass up like a Christmas tree. WAAGNFNP Party Patriot and Giants fan Peter Ramus, (who is away and can’t be here to respond, hopefully back soon), certainly understands my perspective on this one.

    Kiera - check out this cute smiley-photo of Nick Swisher from last night’s A’s win! For those who don’t know, Nick Swisher is one of the nicer guys in sports. He grew his hair out recently to help make wigs for women who’ve lost their hair due to medical conditions.

  7. on 09 Jun 2007 at 4:23 pm 7. Kiera PSI said …

    Happily for OTG, the A’s did indeed light up defector Barry Zito like a Christmas tree, winning 6-0. The bottom of the 9th inning consisted of three pop outs by the Giants. I only watched (with the D-Man) because the A’s were so far ahead I thought it was safe. For some reason when we watch the A’s on TV together, bad things tend to happen.

    And YES, the filly won. Oddly enough, I predicted Rags to Riches, Curlin, Hard Spun in the first three with Tiago 4th. I was right on Win and Place, but Tiago snuck up from where I thought he’d finished and Showed. Not sure who came in 4th, they didn’t say and I couldn’t make it out on screen. Would be a blast if it was Hard Spun though. You’ll have to get the D-Man to verify my call…he was the only one around (if you don’t count the dogs) when I made it.

    Now I’m off to pick up some dead cow for the grill…one of the D-Man’s coworkers gave him a bag of fresh off the stalk corn she got from the county when she filmed a public service spot for them…so we won’t be total carnivores.

  8. on 09 Jun 2007 at 4:51 pm 8. Oaktown Girl said …

    HUZZAH! RAGS TO RICHES WINS THE BELMONT!!

    Yes! A good day in sports so far. The A’s drove traitor Barry Zito out of the game and went on to victory, and the filly, Rags to Riches, wins the Belmont!

    I was not able to see the Belmont live, so I recorded it and dodged every possible public or radio sound bite that might have given away the winner before I got home to see it for myself. So when Rags to Riches did win, even though it was almost an hour after the actual race, it was a delightful surprise to me, and I yelled out in victory!

    And what a tough horse she is too: stumbled out of the gate and still managed to stay with the pack until her speed and superior acceleration took over. Outstanding! Was Rags to Riches fresher than Curlin, who raced in both the Derby and Preakness? Sure. But those are the breaks. “Rags” still may have won anyway had all “freshness” been equal. The “experts” said before the race that Rags had the best acceleration of any horse in the field, and her ability to handle this, longest race of the “Big Three”, was never in question.

    It’s the first time a filly has won the Belmont in 102 years. Can you believe that? I’m sure a lot has to do with lack of opportunities given to the female horses. It turns out fillies run with the colts all the time in Europe, it’s just a much rarer thing here in the U.S. Well gee, surprise, surprise. I wonder why that could be? Just one more thing to add to the already embarrassingly long list of stupid, backward-ass “traditions” we continue to be tied to here in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

  9. on 09 Jun 2007 at 8:38 pm 9. Kiera PSI said …

    Well, I’ll be damned. Hard Spun DID come in 4th. I just got him and Tiago backwards, but otherwise I called the sucker. I’m going to have to start calling horse races. I got one right for the Derby, two right for the Preakness, and came really close to calling the top four in the right order for the Belmont.

    Now, you know, if I’d bet on the puppy, I wouldn’t have been able to call it at all. Sigh. I guess I’ll stay broke.

  10. on 10 Jun 2007 at 3:19 pm 10. JP Stormcrow said …

    I wasted much of the morning of the 2nd most beautiful day in the history of the world in a row here watching the Mens Final of the French Open. (A part of the household follows tennis as if it was a real sport - actually I do like the aspect of tennis that even more so than baseball you have to “win” your way out at the end.) Result was Nadal somewhat easily over Federer for the 2nd year in a row. My wife was saying that it was too bad for Nadal that he came along just as Federer was peaking, because barring injury to Federer, Nadal might never make it to number 1 over all. My take is that it is too bad for Federer, because without Nadal, he would almost certainly have won a French Open or two and cemented his reputation as the best of all time (as if one needs to feel bad for either of these two incredibly luck young men.) And in actuality, Nike played Nike this morning, and guess what? Nike won.

    And it certainly was better than watching the Pirates play National League patsies to the resurgent Yankees this weekend.

  11. on 10 Jun 2007 at 5:22 pm 11. Oaktown Girl said …

    My wife was saying that it was too bad for Nadal that he came along just as Federer was peaking, because barring injury to Federer, Nadal might never make it to number 1 over all.

    I’m sure the people who organize and manage professional tennis could not be happier that Federer actually has some decent competition. And I have to agree because it certainly makes for more interesting viewing. Taking a swipe at tennis as a “sport”? You’ve got to be joking, therefore I’m not going to bite.

    And are you really ready to call the yankees “resurgent” after just a few wins? Really, JP? That has to be the frustration talking, and I feel ya, baby.

    The A’s completed a sweep of the Giants today, but of course they tacked on another player to the injury list in doing so. Time to change the “A” from “Athletics” to “Ambulance”.

    OK, back to (blog) work. Will return later with a movie-themed tale of shock and horror.

  12. on 10 Jun 2007 at 5:59 pm 12. christian h. said …

    Sorry, need to vent: yesterday, Tim Hudson of the Braves hit the Cubs A. Soriano with the first pitch of the game and wasn’t thrown out (correct decision). Today, T. Lilly of the Cubs hits E. Rentaria - the benches had not been warned before - and gets tossed in the 1st inning. WTF?

  13. on 10 Jun 2007 at 7:47 pm 13. Michael Bérubé said …

    Does the open thread include Sopranos discussions? Just asking. I understand, of course, the no-spoilers-for-the-West-Coast rule.

  14. on 10 Jun 2007 at 7:52 pm 14. Oaktown Girl said …

    You can talk about The Sopranos for sure. I think the showing was the same for east and west coast? I dunno. It was 6pm out here, so I just assumed it was showing at 9pm out there. But anyway, you are cleared on the West Coast for Soprano chat.

    I guess, if you want to be really careful, you can put “SOPRANO CHAT” at the top of each comment? But then someone will feel obliged to ask, “What’s Soprano cat?”. But that’s cool, since there was the cat plot point anyway, right?

  15. on 10 Jun 2007 at 7:52 pm 15. James Killus said …

    When Wash dies in Serenity, you suddenly realise that this is not just a Movie Based on a TV Show, where all the main characters will come through it okay (Yeah, sure, they killed off Preacher earlier, but he wasn’t anybody’s husband, and besides, he was the Expendible Guy, if you know what I mean).

    But after the sudden, violent death of Wash, you realize that literally Anybody Could Be Next (though I’d have backed River Tam against anybody or anything up to and possibly including a nuclear missile).

  16. on 10 Jun 2007 at 7:57 pm 16. Michael Bérubé said …

    Yeah, we could talk about Famously Puzzling Endings in general, though I wasn’t all that puzzled by this one. I thought it was entirely appropriate, and I was terribly anxious over the last ten minutes, worrying that the ending would suck. Many people apparently believe it did; I’m happy to say that they’re wrong.

    OK, then, how about we start with Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw?

  17. on 10 Jun 2007 at 8:00 pm 17. Oaktown Girl said …

    Is the take on the Soprano’s ending that it was “puzzling”? I have no idea what the buzz is.

  18. on 10 Jun 2007 at 8:06 pm 18. Michael Bérubé said …

    Can I say what it was? And “puzzling” is putting it mildly. I finally logged on to the official Sopranos website at hbo.com and they’ve got thousands of screaming, pissed-off people blaming David Chase, HBO, Gojira, and the inventor of television for ruining their lives forever. . . .

  19. on 10 Jun 2007 at 8:12 pm 19. Oaktown Girl said …

    Michael - please go ahead and give your Soprano’s ending summary and official CFL breakdown. In other words, speak freely.

    And any rat bastard who dares besmirch the name of our great Gojira is DEAD! Dead I tell you!!

  20. on 10 Jun 2007 at 9:03 pm 20. Michael Bérubé said …

    Dang! Hate to be a tease, but I just had a long argument/discussion about the ending with Janet and have to go to bed. First thing tomorrow morning, I promise! But in the meantime, I think it’s pretty clear that Tony gets killed. But his murder is conveyed by a simple black screen and a cutoff of the awful Journey song that Tony has put on the jukebox. I get it, I’m sure plenty of other people got it, but my goodness are the hbo.com commenters upset. I hope they get over it by tomorrow morning. . . .

  21. on 10 Jun 2007 at 9:18 pm 21. Oaktown Girl said …

    Michael, thanks for the pre-going to bed update. We look forward to having your official WAAGNFNP Chairman-For-Life Soprano’s ending breakdown in all it’s glory here tomorrow.

  22. on 10 Jun 2007 at 10:29 pm 22. JP Stormcrow said …

    Spoil away as far as I am concerned, I have seen precisely 1(one) episode. I fell asleep during the embarrassing 2nd quarter of the Cavs game .. so no one tell me who won… (Apparently they went on a 22-4 run in the 4th to make it “respectable”.)

    For Famously Puzzling Endings, I only seem to be awake enough for films. For Blade Runner it is more the various endings, than the puzzle in any one of them, and supposedly the “really final, we mean it this time” Director’s Cut will come out some time this year. In John Carpenter’s The Thing (which opened the same day as Blade Runner.), although it is clear that both characters will freeze to death, the possibility remains open that one or both are in fact The Thing.

    But my favorite puzzling film ending is Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in America, where James Woods’ character either is or isn’t suddenly shredded in a garbage truck.

    And in closing, the other day I located a complete online copy of O’Donoghue’s How to Write Good, which of course famously counsels against indeterminancy in endings.

  23. on 11 Jun 2007 at 6:45 am 23. Kiera PSI said …

    Hey, Michael.

    Apparently most people DIDN’T get that the black screen meant that Tony was dead. Even the AP Television writer Frazier Moore thought “Probably not. Almost certainly a false alarm.”

    I don’t know why it didn’t occur to people that it meant Tony’s death, or why. It was Tony’s story, told mostly from his perspective. The blacking of the screen would certainly indicate to me that his perspective was over.

    Do you think it has something to do with the fact that the vast majority of people don’t read anymore? Or, at least, don’t read anything beyond gossip magazines and tabloids. Have we lost the subtleties of plot and scene change? Are we going to have brilliant writers come along, shunned by the masses, because the masses no longer have the ability to comprehend their brilliance? Oh. Wait. That’s already happened.

    Sigh.

  24. on 11 Jun 2007 at 6:53 am 24. The Constructivist said …

    Wait, this is HBO and people are having trouble with an ending like that? Almost enough to make me start watching the show now–positively Hawthornesque (esp. The Marble Faun)….

  25. on 11 Jun 2007 at 6:03 pm 25. Oaktown Girl said …

    JP - your “Sopranos Finale” photo is sooooo hysterical.

    And yes, I’m a sick puppy.

  26. on 12 Jun 2007 at 6:53 pm 26. Oaktown Girl said …

    Looking for Michael’s Sopranos wrap up? You can read it here.

  27. on 12 Jun 2007 at 9:23 pm 27. JP Stormcrow said …

    Looking for Michael’s Sopranos wrap up? You can read it here.

    Saw that, and it is also quoted in part here at Firedoglake. Here is his last paragraph (more at Digby per Oaktown’s link.)

    Now, the fact that Chase didn’t even give us a gunshot to go on, no clue that Tony really dies — well, so what? Are there really ghosts in The Turn of the Screw, or is the governess mad? (That debate has been going on for more than a century now.) We’re left to wonder whether we’ve been duped into thinking that Tony dies because all the staging in that final scene — the brief shots of each of the restaurant patrons, the focus on the guy going to the men’s room, the closeups of Meadow having trouble parking the car — feels like the generic suspense-creatin’ mechanisms that precede a catastrophe. We stop and ask ourselves how much of our reaction depends on those narrative mechanisms. And so the ending becomes, in a meta- way, not Chase’s “final fuck you” to the viewers (as so many pissed-off viewers have said) but, rather, a form of what did you expect? — except that it’s a real question, not a rhetorical one.

    It might not be utterly brilliant or anything, but it works for me. . . .

    Turns out that we just got HBO, and I was cruising through channels and came upon the last 10 minutes of the show in rerun. So now I’ve seen one episode years ago (soccer coach who was abusing some of the girls) and … the ending. So I have very little of that messy distracting context … (It’s like I could almost be on a Sopranos ending jury.) I will just say even seeing only that little bit, that the narrative buildup of suspense was palpable.

    My theory is that Dennis Hopper came out of the Ladie’s Room wearing an oxygen mask.

  28. on 15 Jun 2007 at 2:18 pm 28. Oaktown Girl said …

    OK, here’s the movie-themed tale of shock and horror I promised way back up in number 11 - just barely under the wire beating out the next Open Thread (got too bogged down in blog work). This does not exactly qualify per JP’s parameters of having your perceptions changed mid-movie because the shock and horror happens pretty much as soon as the movie begins; the radical change being that I had no idea I was about to embark on a journey of shock and horror.

    I don’t know why I’m even bothering to tell this story because in over 15 years I’ve yet to encounter anyone who can empathize with me, or at least pretended to. But here we go again…

    Just before Silence of the Lambs came out, it was being shown as a free preview in the semi-artsy movie theatre near the local university. I see this big movie poster that says “Free Sneak Preview” for a movie starring Jodie Foster, who I think is an outstanding actress. I’m thinking, “Great, I’m so there!”. I had never heard of the book, probably didn’t even know it was a book. And if the preview poster had “based on the terrifying best seller” on it, I totally missed it. I’m sure I just saw the words “free” and “Jodie Foster” and that’s all I needed.

    So I walked into “Silence of the freaking Lambs” thinking I was just going to see your everyday somewhat interesting drama made better than average by virtue of Foster starring in it. In other words, I walked into that movie a complete lamb. To say I got slaughtered is to put it hysterically mildly. I’ll never forget: near the beginning of the movie when Foster descends the stairs to visit Lecter for the first time, I’m screaming full-volume inside my head “Don’t go down there!”, and I didn’t even know why yet, except that movie had already created such a terrible sense of something much worse than mere menace, terror, and doom. But Foster went down there, and it just got worse after that. Excellent movie…freaked the shit out of me. Hardly slept a wink that night.

    Anyway, I tell this story to illustrate the import that mental preparation can play. I haven’t told this story to anyone who can relate because everyone I know who’s ever seen the movie had at least some idea of what they were in for, so they didn’t experience fraction of what I did. So I have yet to get an ounce of satisfaction from the empathy of anyone else; very frustrating. And every single person who ever responded, “Oh come on, it wasn’t that bad”, already knew what to expect when they saw the film. So here’s what I’ve been dying to say for years: Fuck all y’all!!!