A Dot Labelled "Peter Pettigrew"

(SPOILER WARNING: Obviously, this post contains spoilers for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and basically all other books/films in the Harry Potter franchise.)

Okay wizards and witches, it's fan-theory time. Today we're addressing that age-old continuity conundrum, "Why didn't Fred and George Weasley notice in their Marauder's Map that there was a little dot labelled 'Peter Pettigrew' following their little brother around and sleeping in his bed?" Fear not, Gentle Readers: I propose a solution which may explain not only this, but other apparent continuity errors as well.

The reason Fred and George never noticed that the little dot labelled "Peter Pettigrew" in Ron's bed is because Peter Pettigrew was not his name at that time.

How did that sleazy little creep get Sorted into Gryffindor, though?

After living as a rat for twelve years, Pettigrew was Scabbers for all intents and purposes. No one had called him anything but Scabbers in more than a decade, and as far as we know he had never, in all that time, broken character . It makes sense that he would have come to inhabit the role completely, thinking of himself as Scabbers (if he thought of himself at all, and didn't simply go on autopilot and let his rat instincts take over). But when news of Sirius' escape from Azkaban reached him, something shifted in his little rodent mind, and he began to remember the reason he had been living as a rat for all those years. The guilt came rushing back, and so perforce did the memories of what he had done, why he had hidden for so long.

According to the Marauder's Map Fact File on Pottermore, the Marauder's Map "[s]hows the location of any person or ghost on Hogwarts' grounds, [and] isn’t fooled by an Animagus or an Invisibility Cloak." It says nothing about animals or non-sentient beings, and given that Harry never specifically mentions seeing anything other then humans and ghosts in the map, it's reasonable to assume that the map only shows sentient beings. This makes sense from a user experience standpoint. Think about it: if the map showed every organism in Hogwarts, the interface would be overloaded with useless information about the position of every mouse, spider, and fruit-fly in the castle, making it much more difficult for the user to filter out the important information.

If the above is true (and I'll admit, that's a big "if"), then that also explains why Fred and George never noticed a long thin shape labelled "Slytherin's Monster" slithering through the walls during Chamber of Secrets. Being a non-sentient creature without a unique name that it was aware of, the basilisk thus did not show up on the Marauder's Map.

This theory also supported by the movie-only scene in Alfonso Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, in which Harry sees a dot labelled "Peter Pettigrew" in the Marauder's Map which is moving towards him down a dark and (apparently empty) hallway. Harry never actually sees Pettigrew on the map in the book, but if we take this scene as canon, it suggests that by this point Pettigrew had started to remember who he was, and the map re-labelled him accordingly.

Now don't worry, I can hear your objections already. "But why didn't the map say 'Helena Ravenclaw' instead of 'The Grey Lady'? Why didn't it show Voldemort standing next to Quirrel?" Both excellent questions, Astute Reader. I shall endeavor to answer them as best I can. First, Helena Ravenclaw did not show up on the map for precisely the reasons mentioned in my theory: she had been known as the "Grey Lady" for so long (nearly a thousand years) that she had internalized the name and considered it her own.

As for Voldemort, I can't say for sure. If the map shows ghosts, then one could reasonably assume that the Dark Lord would show up as well, right? Not necessarily. When Voldemort returns to life near the end of Goblet of Fire, he says to his Death Eaters that when the spell he intended to kill Harry with rebounded, "I was ripped from my body, less than spirit, less than the meanest ghost … but still, I was alive. What I was, even I do not know … "

Whatever was left of Voldemort may have been too little for the map to recognize as sentient, or it may have been masked by Quirrel's life-force. Finally, (and this may be a bit of a stretch), Voldemort is often known as "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named", so maybe his name itself was under some sort of concealing enchantment which makes it not show up on all but the most powerful detection systems, sort of like the nominal equivalent of being Unplottable? We know that he has the power to make his name Taboo, so making it Unplottable as well doesn't seem like too much of a stretch.

Though the above theory is obviously not canon, I hope that it can help to clear up any issues you may have had with the illustrious Ms. Rowling's storytelling.

Until next time... mischief managed.

[Film Review] Black Panther

If you're a white boy (or girl) like me, this is likely to be your first foray into Afrofuturism. I think it might be for me, though I can't be sure -- it's not like there's a comprehensive Afrofuturist Registry or whatever. But whether it's your first encounter with Black-created science fiction or your thousandth, Black Panther offers something I can promise (with reasonable certainty) that you've never seen before: a big-budget Hollywood blockbuster movie, created by Black authors, artists, and actors, tied into a major and extremely popular shared cinematic universe, in which Blackness is not only prominent, but portrayed positively and in a way which is central to the story. Black Panther goes to places I never expected to see a Hollywood movie deal with in such a frank manner, and even goes so far as to point the blinding cultural spotlight that is the Marvel Cinematic Universe towards some disturbing and controversial truths.

Yeah, that's right: this movie asks you to consider some uncomfortable facts about race in America, Africa, and the African Diaspora. Deal with it. You'll still get to see awesome fight scenes, top-notch special effects, and subtle nods to Marvel Comics and MCU history. It's not all sad-times and serious business: there's plenty of domestic comedy, explosions, and affectionate kisses from battle-rhinos to keep you entertained.

[This review will contain mild spoilers for the first act of Black Panther, but I'll do my best not to ruin the major surprises for you.]

The tale begins with a visually-stunning infodump which explains the history of Wakanda and its massive deposits of the super-metal vibranium, as well as their decision to conceal their technological prowess from the rest of the world, and how they came to select the first Black Panther as their king. Since then, the title of king-and-Black-Panther has passed from father to son in the royal line: upon the recent assassination of King T'Chaka (John Kani) in Captain America: Civil War, the mantle passes to his son, Prince T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman).

Women are well and strongly represented; most of T'Challa's
entourage, from his bodyguards to his tech guru, are female.

(From the very first shot, I was reminded of that scene from the beginning of Roots, in which newborn Kunta Kinte is held up to take his first look at the night sky by his father, who tells his infant son "Behold! The only thing greater than yourself." In a way, Black Panther is a love-letter from Black parents (and aunts, uncles, big brothers, and big sisters), to the next generation of Black children, saying "Behold! This is how awesome your future could be; make it so.")

After that we jump ahead to Oakland, California in 1992, where King T'Chaka shows up unannounced, surprising his younger brother Prince N'Jobu (Sterling K. Brown), who has secretly been arming people of African descent with Wakandan weaponry in order to bring about revolution. T'Chaka is forced by this betrayal -- and N'Jobu's attempt on the life of T'Chaka's adviser -- to kill his younger brother, an act which will have dire consequences for T'Chaka's kingdom . . . and for his son in particular.

Next we skip ahead to the modern day where T'Challa ascends to the throne after a quick round of ritual combat. He learns that Age of Ultron villain Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis) -- who recently stole a sizable chunk of Wakandan vibranium and killed several people in the process -- has resurfaced in Busan, South Korea, which prompts T'Challa to round up a posse -- consisting of his ex-lover Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) and his chief honor-guardswoman Okoye (Danai Gurira) -- and head out to bring him in. This plan of course goes south, forcing T'Challa to return empty-handed . . . or nearly so. CIA operative Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) gets caught in the crossfire of Klaue's escape (which is effected by one Erik "Killmonger" Stevens (Michael B. Jordan), a former U.S. black ops soldier and son of Prince N'Jobu, making him T'Challa's cousin), and T'Challa decides they can't leave the man to die from wounds he sustained in "their" fight. So they pack Ross onto their quinjet and take him back to Wakanda for a round of super-healing . . . which entails exposing their country's technological superiority to an outsider (and a white guy to boot!)

Michael B. Jordan lends villain Erik Killmonger a formidable emotional range,
from a scary-intense calm to a bitter, wrathful spite.

But of course, things go from bad to worse when Killmonger shows up unexpectedly in Wakanda, revealing his hidden heritage and, by dint of his royal blood, challenging T'Challa for the throne . . . and the mantle of the Black Panther!

Alright, that's all the storyline I'm gonna spoil for you. Onward, to the review!

I don't think I've ever seen a movie with a token white guy before: it was an interesting inversion of the status quo. I also think it was a smart move on the writers' part, because by making a White man (Martin Freeman) one of the good guys, they preclude the inevitable racist braying that the film demonizes White people. The film doesn't exclude White people, neither from the protagonists nor from the antagonists, it simply takes the logical step of casting a movie set mostly in Africa with mostly people of African descent. Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

Killmonger is unusual for a Marvel villain: instead of being crazy-eyed psycho or a moustache-twirling omnicidal tyrant, Killmonger is calm and soft-spoken, almost scarily calm: a marked departure from his depiction in the comics, where he's about as restrained as Hulk Hogan. The villain was actually one of the film's strongest points (and Black Panther has a great many strong points). While he's unquestionably evil and clearly not interested in what's best for Wakanda -- or anyone else, including himself -- once we learn his backstory, he becomes . . . not exactly sympathetic exactly (we can't agree with his methods, or even his goals), we can at least understand what made him so fucked-up in the first place, and feel bad for him and his misfortune at the hands of an unjust system and his betrayal/abandonment by the people (his own flesh and blood) who should have taken him in and cared for him. 

Black Panther doesn't shy away from uncomfortable truths about the African condition, both in Africa itself and across the globe (e.g., black-on-black crime, institutionalized racism, stereotyping, the need for Pan-Africanism, etc.) As Killmonger points out (as near as I can remember the quote), "Y'all sittin' up here comfortable [while] there's about two billion people all over the world that looks like us, but their lives are a lot harder [than yours]."

Killmonger is unusually philosophical for a Marvel villain: his words (especially his final line of the film) will stay with you long after Black Panther is over. Just make sure you stay until the very, very end.

Wakanda forever!

[Movie Review] To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar
Universal Pictures/Amblin Entertainment, 1995
Director: Beeban Kidron
Writer: Douglas Carter Beane
Starring: Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, John Leguizamo, Robin Williams

My wife has been trying to get me to watch this movie for years, and I'm glad I finally got around to it. I positively giggled like a schoolgirl; I challenge you to watch Wesley Snipes giggling maniacally while slipping into a pair of black thigh-high nylons, and not be tempted to giggle yourself.

It felt really, deliciously weird to see extremely masculine actors (who — need I remind you — respectively played the eponymous vampire-hunting protagonist of the Blade trilogy and longtime hetero sex-symbol Johnny from Dirty Dancing) playing ultra-feminine drag queens. What's more, these drag-queens are most fabulous drag queens in New York: Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes) and Vida Boheme (Patrick Swayze) are finalists in a drag competition in NYC, and earn the right to continue on to the finals, which will take place in Hollywood in just a few days' time. Pausing briefly to take the hapless "drag princess" Chi-Chi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo) under their wing, before heading off on a cross-country road trip from the Big Apple to Tinseltown... with an unplanned stop in Podunk, USA.

"Noxeema, you remember John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt?"
"Oh yes: his name is my name, too!"

There's a really excellent cameo by the late great Robin Williams as the proprietor of New York's gayest restaurant (which is really saying something), who gives the girls a lead on a trustworthy used-car dealer when he learns they can't afford plane tickets. While his back is turned, the girls "borrow" a signed portrait of famed actress, dancer, singer, and lingerie inventor Julie Newmar, in hope that her divine favor will bless their road-trip and guide them to victory in the nationals.

The girls, of course, select the less-reliable but far more fashionable 1967 Cadillac DeVille convertible, which looks great but breaks down somewhere in the Midwest (it's never established exactly where, but I'm guessing anywhere from Ohio to Missouri [edit: apparently it was filmed in Nebraska]). Forced to wait out the weekend in B.F.E. until the replacement part arrives on Monday, the girls settle into the (as in, the only) bed-and-breakfast and proceed to spruce up the town and enhance the lives of its residents over the course of a long weekend (kind of like Thor, but with phenomenal hair and outfits).

Actually, scratch that: it's a lot like Thor after all.

Before I get into analysis, please allow me to clarify that these characters are not women trapped in men's bodies, they are something altogether more fantastic. As Noxeema explains it,

"When a straight man puts on a dress and gets his sexual kicks, he is a transvestite. When a man is a woman trapped in a man's body and has a little operation he is a transsexual. [. . .] When a gay man has way too much fashion sense for one gender he is a drag queen."

While it's probably a little simplistic (to say nothing of being dated), I'm going to use this definition for the purposes of my review, because A) it's much easier than wading into the minefield that is LGBTQ nomenclature, and B) why complicate things by using a definition other than the one being used in the work you're reviewing? Anyway, moving right along...

I don't think that anyone would ever accuse Wong Foo of being overly realistic; the townsfolk are very accepting of Vida, Noxeema, and Chi-Chi right off the bat, despite what would probably be seen in real life as repeated attempts to impose big-city relativism on traditional small-town values. IRL, the girls would probably get run out of town just for trying to insert themselves into the residents private lives and business. Though personally I'd say that stopping domestic violence and putting paid to sexual harassers and would-be rapists would fall more into the "civic sanitation" category, but that's just one man's opinion.

The first and second acts are full of shots like this one, in which "the girls" visibly inject bright color into an otherwise dull world of grays, sun-bleaching, and earth-tones.

Like its protagonists, To Wong Foo seems to care more about style than substance. Please understand that I don't mean this in a bad way: I'm not saying that the movie lacks depth or emotional power. I'm saying that while the plot it offers is not likely to occur in the real world, it offers an idealized, artificially-constructed alternate reality, in which diversity is not just accepted but celebrated, where the banal is cast off in favor of the fabulous, and where getting out of a rut is as easy as changing your outfit and wig.

Hmm... stern, cold reality taking a backseat to airy, extravagant, self-conscious artifice? That sounds exactly like a drag queen to me. :-)

[Movie Review] Fried Green Tomatoes

Director: Jon Avnet
Producers: Jon Avnet, Norman Lear
Writers: Fannie Flagg, Carol Sobieski
Based upon: the novel Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg
Starring: Kathy Bates, Jessica Tandy, Mary Stuart Masterson, Mary-Louise Parker, Cicely Tyson

This was actually the second or third time I've watched what Manjula Nahasapeemapetilon famously called her "favorite book, movie, and food". Since this film is so well-known (and so old), and since I'm not recording my first thoughts on the subject, I'm going to try something a little different for this review. Instead of summarizing the plot for you, I'm just going to launch right into some of my thoughts and musings on this rightly-famous classic of American cinema.

If you've never seen it, I'd like to take this opportunity to issue a SPOILER WARNING (though I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations on spoilers has expired by now).

The first thing that struck me about this movie was how quickly we're made to feel a strong emotional attachment to Buddy: in the space of a single scene, we're introduced to this caring and loving older brother to tomboyish Idgie (and beau to the young and beautiful Ruth), made to understand that he is a caring and loving individual, charming and sweet besides, and to appreciate his gift for both storytelling and chivalry -- which, of course, leads to his heart-wrenching demise at the wheels of an oncoming train.

"C'mon, Buddy! Get out! Get outta there!"

When Buddy dies, we're mainly led to feel bad for Ruth and Idgie, but I had never before considered the fact that Idgie's father nearly bankrupted himself to pay for her older sister's wedding, which was to take place later that day -- a wedding which said older sister feared would be "ruined" by Idgie's unladylike behavior, but was instead ruined by the unexpected and brutal death of the family's oldest son, just yards away from the family home. Not only did this tragedy leave both Idgie and Ruth emotionally scarred, it also ruined what was supposed to be the happiest day of her older sister's life, and must have resulted in the total loss of nearly all of the considerable sum her father expended on the wedding and its paraphernalia (the movie never does say whether the wedding was rescheduled, but I hope it was, because otherwise Buddy's death would cast a black cloud over the older sister's wedding anniversaries in perpetuity -- which I admit seems kind of small compared to the loss of a son and brother, but it is another twist of the knife nonetheless).

Preach, sister.

Speaking of knives, Big George must love Idgie a lot if he's willing to threaten -- albeit indirectly -- a white man in 1920s Alabama. George would have known he was taking his life (and possibly the lives of his family) into his hands when he pulled the knife from his pocket and began nonchalantly trimming his nails with it, though I suspect that seeing a man push his pregnant wife down a flight of stairs probably lent him courage. However, I thought it was a little unrealistic that any man, no matter how big and strong he is, could endure a horse-whipping from a Klansman without even grunting, let alone crying out in pain. I mean, it's an autonomic response: you can't help but scream when someone uses a strip of rough leather, moving at supersonic speeds, to take chunks out of your back. There's no shame in crying out, but I felt that George's stoicism made him seem a little passive, even animalistic, in his refusal (or inability?) to use his voice to cry out in pain.

"Oh, don't mind me. Nothin' to see here."

I also paid more attention to the character of Smokey Lonesome, the palsied drifter whom Idgie and Ruth take under their wing. As a younger person I felt bad for him, but I never really thought about how difficult his life in the rural South must have been, in an era before the ADA and physical therapy, an era where harassing beggars and cripples was an acceptable pastime for both children and adults. For a man who's been so beaten-down by life, I realized for the first time what tremendous courage and love Smokey must have had, to be willing to stand up to Frank Bennet -- a young, strong, fit man, a man whom Smokey knew to be a Klansman and a wife-beater -- and tell him that he "ain't goin' nowhere with Miss Ruth's baby." There was every possibility that Frank Bennet would have killed him just for being a witness, let alone actually trying to prevent him from leaving with his infant son.

Finally, I was once again shocked by how cavalier everyone is about the whole issue of covering up a murder (of an admittedly horrible person) with HUMAN CANNIBALISM! I understand that they didn't have a lot of options for disposing of Frank's body, but Sheriff Smoote wasn't the only person who ate those ribs! Idgie and Co. fed a human corpse to their unsuspecting customers! And when Ninny Threadgoode explains to Evelyn exactly how clever Ruth and Idgie tricked the mean old sheriff into eating the evidence, instead of being horrified, Evelyn laughs, like she's just been let in on some hilarious joke!

Actually, I take it all back. The bastard had it coming.

Despite this dose of third-act squick, Fried Green Tomatoes remains, in my opinion, one of the most excellent stories ever committed to film. Idgie and Ruth's passionate friendship -- which was apparently an outright lesbian romance in the book -- is one of the most sensitive and nuanced portrayals of female solidarity and love that I've ever encountered in film or print. The long, stationary shot of Ruth's last moments (juxtaposed with Idgie's poignant, tear-filled retelling of Buddy's story about The Lake That Used To Be Here) can still bring a tear to even the most jaundiced eye. So dust off your VHS collection, pop this old gem into your VCR, and give it another try: after all, who doesn't love taking a big, crunchy bite out of a freshly fried green tomato?

[Movie Review] Dinner With Friends (HBO Films, 2001)

Dinner with Friends

HBO Films, 2001

Director: Norman Jewison
Writers: Donald Margulies (play, teleplay)
Starring: Dennis Quaid, Andie MacDowell, Greg Kinnear, Toni Colette

When my mom cleaned out her DVD collection, I decided to take a look and see if there was anything in the "donate box" that interested me; this title was one of my finds. I had never watched it before, didn't know anything about it (though I could take a wild guess that it would involve a group of friends, and at least one dinner), so I went in essentially blind.

The establishing shot brings us to the home of professional food-writers Gabe (Dennis Quaid) and Karen (Andie MacDowell), who are in the midst of preparing dinner for their longtime friends Tom (Greg Kinnear) and Beth (Toni Collette). The doorbell rings, but it's only Beth and her kids; no Tom in sight. While the two couples' kids watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on VHS in the next room, Beth bursts unexpectedly into tears and confesses that she and she and Tom are getting a divorce, and that he's leaving her for another woman. Gabe and Karen are stunned: they've known Tom and Beth since before their kids were born, how could they just split up like this? Karen is furious with Tom's infidelity, while Gabe takes a more hurt-and-bewildered approach, wanting to hear the husband's side of the story (which of course makes his wife even angrier that he would even consider listening to "that philanderer"). Tom, upset to learn that Beth has stolen a march on him by telling their friends about their breakup without him, hurries over to explain himself, but finds himself bewlidered by a distinct coolness, even lack of sympathy, from two of his oldest friends. Act One concludes with both couples dealing with the fallout in their own ways: one through an argument about forgiveness and hypothetical infidelity, the other through a shouting-match which unexpectedly metamorphoses into passionate hate-sex.

Next, we're taken on a flashback to twelve years previously, when Gabe and Karen first introduced Beth to Tom during a stay at their Martha's Vineyard summer home (!). The happy young couples -- one established, one new-made -- bathed in the sepia light of a summer evening, make decisions and form bonds which we (the audience) know will lead to a decade of misery, broken families, and long-term friendships dying on the vine. The result is a that everything that follows feels foreordained, like there's no way it could have been avoided or mitigated. The audience can only watch helplessly as the characters begin down roads which we know lead to profound unhappiness -- not exactly a sensation that I, personally, enjoy feeling (outside of horror stories, that is).

The story shifts forwards a few months, and we see that everything has changed; between the men, as well as between the women. Both of the new divorcées are making drastic, ill-advised changes to their lives: changes which shock and bewilder their longtime friends, making them question whether they even want to remain friends with people who suddenly seem like strangers, and forcing them to reevaluate whether their own marriage is really any stronger than the one that's just fallen apart before their very eyes.

Margulies's dialogue is realistic, with plenty of interruptions, repetitions, and idiosyncratic turns of phrase, yet dense and multilayered in that peculiar way that only stage-plays can be. While I appreciate how difficult it is to write dialogue that reveals character and moves the plot forward while still sounding natural and unrehearsed, I found that it was a little exhausting to listen to after a while. When every sentence is jam-packed with meaning, I found myself subconsciously trying to interpret and analyze as I watched, and as a result I often felt a little behind-the-curve, struggling to keep up with the oncoming barrage of dialogue and plot-points.

Despite feeling badly for the characters and their emotional/marital situations, I found that their obscene levels of wealth to be distracting, and a bit of a turn-off. Sure, it sucks that you're getting a divorce, but maybe, I don't know, your enormous piles of cash will make that a little easier to bear. Both couples live in enormous, multi-story houses in East Coast suburbia, with three-car garages and tasteful interior décor and marble counter-tops strewn with cooking magazines and fresh ingredients brought back from their most recent trip to Italy. I realize that this movie came out just before the dot-com bubble burst, that standards of wealth were a lot higher back then, but for me it felt like their characters' luxurious lifestyle was a barrier to empathy (which is sort of odd for me, because I never felt that way while watching Downton Abbey or reading The Great Gatsby).

Call it sour grapes if you like, I just couldn't get over feeling like these people were finally getting a dose of the reality that their money and prestigious occupations had insulated them against for so long. Add to that the story's depressing, futility-laced subject-matter and the fact that I just never believed Toni Collette's dry-eyed forced sobs, and you've got a recipe for a dinner which is passable the first time around, but one where I definitely won't be going back for a second helping.

A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)
Director/Writer: Ana Lily Amirpour
Starring: Sheila Vand, Arash Marandi, Marshall Manesh

The very first line line of spoken dialogue in this movie comes from a young boy, asking "Can I have some money?" Which is highly appropriate, because the director took mine. Or rather, she would have, if I had followed my initial impulse to see it in theaters instead of waiting for it to be available at the library. If I'd wasted both an evening and my money I would be quite put out, but since as it turned out I only lost 99 minutes I can't be too upset with myself.

I could easily imagine shots from A Girl Walks Home being used as the backdrop for an episode of a prime-time family sitcom. You know the episode: the wife wants to go see the new art-house film at the Historic Downtown Theatre, but her blue-collar husband doesn't like foreign movies. But not wanting to appear uncultured or xenophobic, he pays for their tickets anyway, and we get to watch him squirm in his chair as his every fear is proven right and made painfully, inescapably real. It could almost be funny, except the only genuinely funny thing in this entire movie is one brief shot of a young female vampire riding a skateboard while wearing a chador.

Whee.

It feels almost like the director was trying to collect every negative stereotype of foreign films in one place. For starters, Girl is an ultra-low-budget affair, and filmed entirely in black-and-white. There are subtitles (the dialogue is all in Farsi, even though it was filmed in California). All the characters are either shallow assholes, depressed and listless, slowly losing their youth, drowning in existential ennui, dying of terminal illnesses, or already dead. The scenery is all rusting industrial complexes, deserted city streets, or squalid apartments. Not a single person in this movie is enjoying themselves, not even the vampire.

Dialogue is delivered laconically, in one- or two-word statements interspersed with several seconds of painfully awkward silence to space them out. At one point, the leading male ("Arash") makes out with the titular girl in her subterranean apartment (to the lively tune of Death by The White Lies), but the director manages to make three actions (the girl puts on a record, turns around, then they make out) take what I think was the entire five minutes that the song lasts. I get that one of the participants in this makeout session has literally all the time in the world, but there is just no way that any teenage boy could delay gratification for that long. It feels like the director found what she knew, just knew was the absolute perfect song to go with this scene, but she didn't have enough dialogue to fill  the scene and couldn't afford to bay the band to shorten it, so she just told her actors to do everything with excruciating slowness to kill time, so their actions sync up with the song.

While it's true that many real-life conversations do contain a lot more silence that we realize, the reason movies are interesting is because they cut that stuff out: they condense life into a faster-paced, better-edited version of itself.

Despite the agonizing length of this movie, almost none of that time is used to fill us in on the backstory or to give context. Near the end of the very first, scene, Arash walks past what appears to be a drainage ditch full of human bodies. This is never explained, mentioned, or commented-upon by any of the characters, not even news or radio anchors heard in passing. Except for one shot in Act III where there are a larger number of bodies in the same ditch, and one additional body is being tossed unceremoniously into it.

Girl is full of non-sequiturs, loose ends, and the unexplained. For example, the transition between Acts II and III is a two-minute sequence of a drag queen in a black cowboy-shirt ballroom dancing with a Mylar balloon in an empty, abandoned courtyard. Just like the ditch-full-of-bodies from earlier, this is also never explained, commented-upon or explored, and the drag queen is never seen or alluded to again.

This was your cue to run, bro, not to erotically stick your finger in her mouth. What did you think was going to happen?

The posters and flyers all billed this movie as "[t]he first Iranian Vampire Western ever made," but being filmed in California, even the dusty part, does not a Western make. Girl does not exist within the milieu of the Western genre; if Girl is a Western, then so is Bad Santa, which at least is set in Phoenix, AZ and featured a bank robbery (of sorts). I suspect the director was afraid that people wouldn't pay to see an Iranian-American vampire movie, so she tacked-on "Western" in a bid to make people curious and sell more tickets. And I suppose it worked, after a fashion, since I got suckered into watching it.

I went into this movie thinking that I might broaden my horizons a little, but all I got out of it was a powerful aversion to art-house films. Which is not quite the learning experience I had in mind.

The Hipster Vampires of Detroit

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
Director: Jim Jarmusch
Starring: Loki, Jadis the White Witch, Jane Eyre, Chekov, and Mr. Ollivander

This movie was not what I expected. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it wasn't this. Still not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

The plot runs something like this: Adam (Tom Hiddleston) is a musician and aesthete living a solitary existence in an old house in Detroit that he got on the cheap, supporting his art and music habits by composing indie rock records and selling them to record companies through a human middleman named Ian (Anton Yelchin), who is unaware that his sort-of-mentor, sort-of-friend is really a vampire. Bored to undeath with the endless stupidity of "the zombies" (mortals) and a general crushing sense of ennui, Adam considers killing himself with a specially-made .38 caliber bullet made from ultra-dense cocobolo wood. But before he can muster the will to end his undeath, he gets a video call from his vampire "wife", Eve, who's been unliving it up in Tangiers with her old friend and mentor Christopher Marlowe (played delightfully by John Hurt), who as it turns out really did write all of Shakespeare's plays.

Eve, fearing that her semi-estranged husband needs some cheering-up, catches a redeye to Detroit, and Adam gives her a grand tour of the ruins of Detroit: lots of weed-choked fields, coyote-haunted ruins, empty streets and houses, and of course the Michigan Theatre (a movie-palace-turned-parking-garage), the old Packard Plant, and all the favored haunts of urbexers and ruin-pornographers alike. Maybe this stuff is still news to people outside the Midwest, but for me, living so close to Detroit, it just comes off as trite. News flash: Detroit isn't a ghost town there are still 700,000 people living in there right now. It's easy and terribly romantic to write it off as a lost cause, but that's pretty demeaning to the people who actually live there. It's like unironically posting "RIP Native Americans" in your tumblr feed: they're still very much alive, thank you very much, and they resent the assumption that their struggle to survive is over.

Which brings me to another problem I had with this movie: like Gran Torino before it, Lovers is yet another movie set in Detroit (a city where 80% of residents are black) which features virtually no black people. The one black man in this movie is a medical technologist, so the film gets points for not giving in to easy stereotypes. But besides that guy, I think there's one black extra in the whole movie; that is the full extent of their representation onscreen. Clearly, since the director must have been to Detroit in order to film this thing, the only explanation is that he (or the studio) isn't interested in portraying Detroit accurately.

Anyway, getting back to the summary: Eve shows up and Adam shows her around, and they talk and philosophize and opine about just how tragic it is that the zombies can't be as wise and good and refined and civilized as they are. Adam seems to cheer up for a while under Eve's influence, but their reverie is rudely interrupted by the arrival of Ava, Eve's "teenage" sister from LA, who shows up uninvited in their house one night, asking if she can crash on their couch and eat their "food".

Mia Wasikowska is spot-on with her portrayal of Ava as a bratty, self-absorbed teenie-bopper who either can't read anger in other people's voices and faces, or else has complete faith that pouting and begging will get her out of trouble when said people inevitably explode at her. The character is grating, but that's definitely intentional here, since she's practically the only character who induces change at all: without her, Adam and Eve would probably spend the whole movie lounging around, listening to indie music on vinyl, and drinking type O negative out of crystal absinthe-glasses. Their existence is stable and comfortable, if a bit dull: Ava throws a wrench into all that.

The main reason I tuned in was for the promise of a vampire movie set in Detroit. With its wide-open spaces, appalling murder rate, spotty law enforcement, and large numbers of streetlights that just don't work, Detroit seemed like the kind of place where vampires would run wild.

But Hiddleston's Adam and Swinton's Eve are anything but wild: they're refined, elegant creatures who've had centuries to cultivate perfect taste in music, literature, and even science. They're epicures and philosophers who, instead of spending their (un)lives on the Eternal Hunt, drink sparingly and spend most of their free time creating art. Definitely an interesting take on the standard vampire, a creature ruled by its passions, but I was kinda hoping to see the undead going completely apeshit in the D.

This movie is definitely not for everyone; I don't think it was for me, personally. At least, not more than once. But it was certainly interesting to see vampires as something other than villains or protagonists in an action, horror, or action/horror movie. It was interesting to think of them as people with houses, careers, long-distance relationships, and in-laws they can't stand. But that's part of why I watch movies about vampires in the first place: I want to be entertained with tales of Gothic horror and gratuitous bloodletting.

If you're into indie music and sadness and being too tragically hip for this world, these are definitely your vampires. But I think my palette has been thoroughly cleansed, and I'm ready to get back on the vampire-as-monster bandwagon, thanks.

[Movie Review] Moby Dick (1956)

Moby Dick (1956)
Director: John Huston
Starring: Gregory Peck, Richard Basehart, Leo Genn, Orson Welles
Screenplay: Ray Bradbury

For years I've been getting suggestions from authors whom I greatly respect and admire that Herman Melville's epic masterpiece Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, is a tale which is worthy of that nebulous and ill-defined distinction of being a "Great American Novel". I had never really given the book much thought, and never seriously considered reading it, until I realized that the recommendations were really starting to pile up: once I realized that this book had been recommended by no less than Nicholas Meyer, Mike Carey, even the astonishingly-talented Ray Bradbury, I decided I really had to see what all the fuss was about.

But I'm a man of limited means, so I thought I would rent the movie from my local library before committing to the novel. After all, that thing is HUGE! You might even say it's a whale of a tale.

"Haunting" is the best word that I can think of to describe this film. I think I finally understand why people keep reading the book, despite its forbidding size: the tale of Ahab and his mad, all-consuming quest for revenge has a way of gripping the mind. I keep finding myself thinking about this story and its characters, even several weeks after watching this film for the first time.

(Oh yeah, I guess there are spoilers ahead. Even though I'm pretty sure the statute of limitations on spoilers expired a long time ago.)

I'm sure you're all familiar with the basic outline of the story, even if you've never read it or seen the movie: Captain Ahab is maimed in an ill-fated encounter with an unusually large and intelligent white sperm-whale named Moby Dick, and spends the rest of his life (as well as his ship and the lives of his crew) in a Quixotic, suicidal quest to take his revenge against the monster who took his leg and scarred his face. Sure, there's all that stuff about Ishmael and Queequeg and Starbuck and all the rest, but make no mistake: Ahab is the real star here, even if it's the White Whale who gets the title.

Peck gives a commanding, sonorous performance as the crazed-but-brilliant Captain Ahab, master of the whaling ship Pequod. He's a bit more handsome than I expected Ahab to look, but Peck's Ahab is scarred more deeply inside than out. Ahab is not just a gibbering madman, though: he is an accomplished leader of men, an experienced sea-captain, and possessed of a brilliant analytical mind.

Orson Welles gives an unexpected cameo as Father Mapple, who delivers a sermon (on the subject of Jonah and the Whale, of course) which closes out the first act. Watching Welles transition smoothly from glowering intensity to thundering rage to pious tenderness is a fascinating study in emotional nuance from a master actor; do not skip this scene, however you might feel about listening to sermons.

As I watched, I was struck by the diversity of the Pequod's crew: in an era where segregation of the races was still enforced by law in many parts of the world, the crew of the Pequod includes Irishmen, Africans, New Englanders, Native Americans, African-Americans, and even a Polynesian Islander. The tasks assigned to various crewmen do not seem to hinge on race (though it's worth noting that the captain and all three of his mates are white), and race is not a barrier to promotion. After demonstrating his considerable skill with a harpoon, Queequeg is immediately recruited to the Pequod with a whopping sixtieth part of the voyage's profits (compared to Ishmael's measly three-hundredth).

Bradbury's screenplay is axiom-dense. It seems like every other line is some sort of pithy maxim that could easily spark hours of book-club conversations and classroom debates:

• "Better a sober cannibal [for a bedfellow] than a drunken Christian." ~Ishmael
• "Captain Ahab did not name himself. .Sign the paper now, and wrong him not because he happens to have a wicked name." ~Bildad
• "Captains can't break the law. They is the law, as far as I'm concerned." ~Flask

Moby-Dick is actually a very philosophical film, despite the blue-collar setting. Lots of thought-provoking dialogue on the nature of Man, the sea and man's place upon it, what rights (if any) one man may hold over another), the extent of obedience and duty to one's captain, and whether it is moral to seek revenge against an unthinking animal. As First Mate Starbuck warns his captain, "To be enraged with a dumb brute that acted out of blind instinct... is blasphemous." There's a lot of deep thought here, and (at least initially) the viewer might even feel some sympathy with Ahab's desire for what he sees as justice, when he explains why he acts as he does:

Look ye, Starbuck... all visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features. The white whale tasks me. He heaps me. Yet he is but a mask. It is the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate. The malignant thing that has plagued and frightened Man since time began. The thing that mauls and mutilates our race... not killing us outright, but letting us live on... with half a heart and half a lung.

But over the course of the film, we come to have less and less sympathy with Ahab, as it becomes clear just how many people he's willing to take down with him. Besides risking his own life and (remaining) limbs, he risks his ship, the Pequod, which he does not own; the financial well-being of all the New Bedford families who depend on this voyage's success for their sustenance; the lives of his crewmen, and the wages they bring home to their own families; and even (some might argue) his very soul.

In the course of his quest, Ahab encounters other captains who have had their own run-ins with Moby-Dick. Captain Boomer, who lost his hand to the whale (an even greater blow to a seaman than the loss of a leg!), makes jokes about his hook ("Better than flesh and blood! Like her so much, I've a mind to have me other arm cut off,") and professes that he is simply grateful to be alive after such a harrowing encounter. Ahab, of course, refuses to hear the wisdom of these words, and plunges on. The second captain, Gardiner, has suffered an even more terrible loss than either Ahab or Boomer, though not to his own body: his twelve-year-old son was killed by the whale, and the body was lost overboard. Gardiner begs Ahab to stay and help him search for his son's body, but Ahab, throwing Christian charity aside, and continues in his quest.

Sadly, unlike the acting, the script, and pretty much everything else about this movie, the whales of Moby Dick are merely "passable" at best. The first whale-chase was convincing enough that I, having never seen real whales up close, briefly wondered whether they might be real. But the illusion only remains convincing because all we see of the fleeing whales are their humps: as soon as I understood that that was all the prop-makers had built, and this was all of them we were going to see, it became a little harder to suspend my disbelief. When the White Whale himself breaches for the first time, it is instantly clear that he's a puppet, and not an especially convincing one. To be fair, this was 1956, and filmmakers were fairly limited by the technology of their day, but it was still something of an anticlimax that the main antagonist looked so fake.

Despite its technological shortcomings, Moby Dick is absolutely worth your time and attention. If you've ever wondered whether the book is any good, but been scared off by its tremendous size and "SERIOUS BUSINESS" reputation, then this film is the next best thing. Your knowledge of this tale will impress the hell out of your friends at parties, and Peck's crazed, throat-shredding screaming of Ahab's final lines - some of the best last words ever penned - is worth the price of admission alone.

"Ye damned whale! From hell's heart I stab at thee! For hate's sake... I spit my last breath at thee...thou damned whale!"

[Movie Review] It Follows

It Follows made it hard for me to fall asleep the night I saw it. Hell, it made me look behind myself more than a few times as I walked back to my car, even in a well-lit parking garage in the heart of downtown Ann Arbor. I think this is mainly because the film feels so familiar and essentially Midwestern, making it much more plausible that this could happen to me, personally. A horror movie set in New York or L.A. could never match It Follows for creepiness, because they could never pass for where I live. This isn't a ghost story that happened in a land far, far away; it happened right here, in these very woods, on a night very much like this one. And the quality of plausibility, the idea that this could happen to you, is what separates a merely spooky story from a terrifying one.

Californians are used to seeing themselves and their neighborhoods in movies, but those of us who grew up in Southeast Michigan have a harder time finding media that accurately represent our home region. In fact, there are only a few big-name films (Gran Torino, Robocop, 8 Mile) and TV shows (Freaks and Geeks, Hung) that spring readily to mind, and even the most recent of these is already four years old.

Because Southeast Michigan movies are such a rare breed, it was somewhat surreal to see teenagers on the big screen that actually looked like my own school-friends, living in houses that actually look like the houses I grew up around. The exterior shots are full of cozy working-class two-stories with white aluminum siding and blue vinyl above-ground pools in the backyard, often installed behind fully separate one-car garages, separated from one another by a grid of chain-link fences . t's all hauntingly familiar to me, which probably explains why I found this movie was so singularly creepy: everywhere in this movie reminds me strongly of places that I've actually lived in or visited with some regularity, from the neat little rows of suburban houses to the pacific splendor of an "up north" cabin to the hauntingly empty shells of burned-out homes and abandoned parks within Detroit itself.

Just try driving past one of these at night,

and tell me it doesn't freak you out. I dare you.

Although the geography of the film is explicit, the time is left ambiguous. The main characters (all in their late teens or early twenties) spend much of the first act lounging in living rooms and basements that look like they haven't been redecorated since the seventies, complete with dark wood-paneling and beige shag carpeting (I think I even saw a macramé owl in the background at one point), but homes that look like this are extremely common in the Detroit area, even today. The kids drive cars that look like they're from the 1980s, but they wear their hair and clothes more-or-less like modern teens and twentysomethings do (though not quite; something's missing, I'm just not sure what). Cell phones never appear, but one of the main characters is repeatedly shown reading Dostoyevsky's The Idiot on a Kindle-esque clamshell e-reader.

The plot of this dark and twisted tale follows Jay (short for Jamie), a freshman or sophomore a local community college, who's been dating an older guy, Hugh, who she's been thinking about sleeping with for the first time. After doing the deed in the backseat of Hugh's hot rod, the young man goes to the trunk to get something while Jay idly soliloquizes, then returns - major shocker! - with a chloroform-soaked cloth which he presses to Jay's face until she passes out. She wakes up some time later, handcuffed into a wheelchair, on a wall-less upper floor of one of Detroit's many abandoned factories. Slowly walking around her, pointing his flashlight out into the night, Hugh explains that something, some unknown entity or person, has been following him for a long time; someone passed it to him through sex, and now he's passed it to her. She can get rid of it by passing it to someone else in turn, but until she does, it will be moving towards her. It only walks, never runs, but it never sleeps, never stops, and only she (or someone whom "it" has pursued before) will be able to see it. No matter what she does or how far she flees, no matter how sturdy the doors she bolts herself behind, it will always be out there, day and night, never stopping or resting, always walking straight towards her.

That's one helluva setup, right? I won't spoil the rest of the movie for you (if you want to know how it ends, look it up on Wikipedia or something), but I can tell you this: I've never felt so uncomfortable while gazing on the figure of an attractive female, mainly because this film is very much aware of the male gaze and how it works, but makes you feel uncomfortable for looking. Jay is definitely sexualized, but it's a kind of coquettish, awkward sexuality that makes me, as a male in my late twenties, feel unsure whether it's OK for me to look or not; this creates tension and cognitive dissonance which reverberates throughout the film.

An example: when Hugh brings Jay home after showing her "it" for the first time, he unceremoniously dumps her on the street outside her home, and zooms off into the night. As her friends rush towards her, the camera affords us a full view of Jay's pink-panty-clad buttocks as she drops to her knees in tears on the front lawn of her parents' home. In another context, this shot would be nothing but empty-headed fanservice, but here it just feels deeply wrong. The audience is made to feel uncomfortable for watching her from this angle while she's having a complete (and totally understandable) emotional breakdown, because there's dissonance between the content of the shot (shapely female buttocks) and the mood (sorrow, vulnerability).

The soundtrack, by Disasterpeace, will definitely be a hit with the hipster crowd. It's all 80s-style 8-bit chiptune synthesizers playing slow, eerie moodscapes, interpsersed with a few high-tension, nerve-janglers. Each piece develops slowly out of layered and riffs, usually with a noticeable echo-filter overlaid. Everything is dark, cold, and minor key, and just as circular/repetitive (in a good way) as the titular it-that-follows. Cold, artificial, unearthly, and highly atmospheric; definitely worth a listen, but only in a well-lit room. Listening to it, I can't help but be reminded of the Lavender Town Syndrome creepypasta that's been passed around the virtual campfires for who-knows-how-long.

I was also impressed with the way the director extracted maximum creep-factor from a minimal special effects budget: since "it" can look like anyone, and changes its appearance to avoid easy detection by its prey, they didn't even need to stick with just one person to play "it". The fact that its appearance changes is key to the story, as well as the overwhelming sense of forebodeing that permeates this film. You find yourself scanning the background every time Jay is in a public space, looking for any extra that seems to be walking towards the camera; we feel distracted and mentally taxed by the need to observe Jay's surroundings, helping put us even more thoroughly in her shoes.

Some critics have been talking about how "it" stands for the relentlessness of urban decay (in Detroit and elsewhere, as the economy limps along and America's preeminence begins to tarnish), but I'm not sure I buy it. The director has said in interviews that he doesn't really care what people think "it" is, as long as they're frightened. Personally, I think that it stands better as a metaphor for STDs (and AIDS in particular), but better still as a parable of teenagers coming to grips with their own looming mortality. As one character says late in the film, quoting Dostoyevsky:

When there is torture, there is pain and wounds, physical agony, and all this distracts the mind from mental suffering, so that one is tormented by the wounds until the moment of death. And the most terrible agony may not be in the wounds themselves but in knowing for certain that within an hour, then within 10 minutes, then within half a minute, now at this very instant—your soul will leave your body and you will no longer be a person, and that this is certain. The worst thing is that it is certain.

...and that's enough to freak anybody out.

[Movie Review] The Howling (1981)

[Warning: this review contains mild spoilers, but probably nothing you couldn't have figured out from the fact that it's a 1980s movie about werewolves. There are only so many ways it can turn out for anyone involved.]


The Howling is a good werewolf movie, but the script doesn't really stand up as well as the special effects do. Don't get me wrong though: the fact that the special effects are still creepy and disturbing even today, over thirty years later, shows just how groundbreaking they must have been in 1981. This was the first movie to feature werewolves transforming onscreen, in full view of the moviegoing public, without resorting to what amounts to stop-motion animation of hair being glued to an actor's face and hands. The viewer can, in special-effects designer Rob Bottin's words, "see the body really stretching, the nose breaking and twisting, the ribs starting to burst out."

Archive footage from the days before werewolves 

were considered even remotely sexy

The Howling also deserves bonus points for being (the first?) movie to feature werewolves as something other than poor, tortured souls who spend a month or two guilt-tripping themselves over their monthly rampages until a loved one puts them down like a rabid dog. These werewolves are in full control of their transformations (which can happen at any time, including during full daylight), and they never ask anyone to chain them up for the night: in fact, they fully enjoy their condition (going so far as to call it not a condition, but "the Gift"), and they chafe at even the relatively minor restrictions they must undergo in order to avoid detection. As one grizzled old werewolf angrily proclaims, 'humans should be our prey [not our livestock]".

My real problem with The Howling is with the flailing ineptitude of the main female character, Karen White (played by Dee Wallace). For someone who seems so utterly incapable of defending herself, or even standing up for herself, it beggars belief that she would survive as long as she does, particularly when more self-possessed characters bite it before her. She spends the whole movie getting pushed around, threatened, herded, cajoled, frightened, stalked, attacked, and even backhanded at one point (to which her immediate reaction, rather than fighting back or getting angry or leaving, is to collapse on the bed and start crying). I get that it's draining to have to spend eight hours a day in a state of frightened agitation, but Dee Wallace doesn't even convince me that she's scared in a lot of scenes: sometimes, she just looks sad, or like she's having stomach cramps. Maybe if the director gave her something to do besides screaming and crying, his leading lady wouldn't have been so drained by the experience that she'd still have the energy to act.

Pictured: a woman in the grip of utter terror

I realize that The Howling is a product of its times, when people paid for tickets to horror movies specifically so they could see a pretty young woman being menaced by terrifying monsters, but watcing this makes me really appreciate how far we've come in thirty years, and how much broader the range of options are for female characters in general, and for the female protagonists of horror movies in particular.

Everything Must Go

This August, I'll be moving in with my fabulous and amazing girlfriend Brianna. In preparation for this momentous occasion, I have been rooting through my boxes and bookcases, trying to trim the unnecessaries out of my personal library. Some items I won't need because Brianna's already got a copy. Others simply don't interest me anymore.


Whatever the cause, I feel like it's always a good idea to get rid of things you don't plan on using. Better to give them to a friend, who might gain a little more enjoyment out of them. This maxim is especially true, I find, when applied to books and movies.

So, without further ado, I present a complete list of items up-for-grabs from my personal library. More may be added as the Big Day approaches, but for now, there are simply too many to be contained by a simple Facebook post.

Let me know if you want any of them, and I'll do my best to get them to you. Keep in mind that the list may not yet be complete, depending on how merciless I decide to be.

[An asterisk next to a title means that it has already been claimed.]

Books
*The Odyssey, Homer (trans. W.H.D. Rouse)
The Arabian Nights (trans. Richard F. Burton)
Collier's Junior Classics: Myths and Legends
Random House English-Spanish Dictionary
Piers the Plowman, by William Langland
*The Bhagavad-Gita (a central holy text of Hinduism)
Michigan Review of Prisoner Creative Writing (mostly poetry)
Lyra's Oxford, by Phillip Pullman (short sequel to the His Dark Materials trilogy)
The Idea of the Canterbury Tales
Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?
Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body, by Neil Shubin
Associated Press Stylebook 2007
The Lonely Planet Travel Guide to Dublin, Ireland

Graphic Novels
You Don't Look 35, Charlie Brown!, by Charles Schulz
*Blankets, by Craig Thompson
*The Best of "The Spirit", by Will Eisner

DVDs
*Finding Nemo
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
The Fellowship of the Ring (fullscreen edition)
The Two Towers (widescreen edition)
The Return of the King (widescreen edition)
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (original 1992 movie)
Spider Man
Spider Man 2
*Grave of the Fireflies
The Simpsons: Season 1
Ghost in the Shell
The Animatrix

Animatronics: Not Dead, Just In Storage

When was the last time you saw a film (besides on DVD or through Netflix!) which boasted of using of "the most advanced animatronics available"? Or indeed, any animatronics at all? A long time ago, I'm willing to bet. Ten years? Maybe more?

To look at it from another angle, when was the last time you saw animatronics used in a real-life, face-to-face setting? Chuck E. Cheese's? Some ride at a theme park for a movie that left theaters fifteen or twenty years ago? Okay, I seem to recall encountering one or two robotic puppets at "The Wizarding World of Harry Potter", but they weren't true animatronics, just models of giant spiders attached to robotic arms.

Animatronics just don't seem to get the same amount of love they once did. The reasons for this are threefold:
1) animatronics are expensive, and once you've made one it's set in stone; you can't do a redesign if the creature doesn't test well with audiences;
2) animatronics contain thousands of moving parts, the malfunction of any one of which could cause the whole machine to cease working, leading to costly delays when filming must be halted while repairs are made; and
3) animatronics are subject to many of the same laws of physics which they attempt to overcome. For example, you can't build a three-story tall praying mantis animatronic for the same reason that a real three-story tall praying mantis wouldn't work: an insect that large simply could not support its own weight.

With these fairly major shortcomings in mind, it's no wonder that filmmakers have turned to CGI to satisfy their needs in the special-effects department.

But I feel that animatronic animals and characters have several advantages over CGI. Advantages which suggest that animatronic technology is not yet dead, nor yet completely outdated.

Number One: Animatronics will always look real.
This one gets swept under the rug a lot. When making a film, the director's primary concern is to get the movie finished on-deadline and under-budget. Everything else is secondary. But what director doesn't want their movies to look good for future audiences, when their films are being displayed by historical societies or film-school professors? The temptation to not just do well, but to leave landmarks for those who follow in one's footsteps is a powerful desire in many directors.

For proof, one simply needs to look at Star Wars.

Pop a copy of Episode I into your DVD player, and take a good look at Jar-Jar Binks. (I know it hurts. Just bear with me for a moment.) Look at how he moves, how he interacts with the objects and actors around him. It doesn't quite look right, does it? Kinda... floaty, right? Like he's not really there? Jar-Jar was created just twelve years ago, using the most advanced CGI technology that had ever been assembled at that time. Barely a decade has passed, and he already looks fake.

Okay, now eject the disk, invite a priest over to purify your entertainment system, and pop in your DVD of Star Wars: A New Hope. Take a good hard look at Chewbacca. He looks really solid, doesn't he? He makes fluid motions, casts realistic shadow-effects, and has a palpable stage-presence. That movie is twenty years older than Episode I, yet Chewie still looks more realistic than Jar-Jar ever could. Why is this? It's because Chewbacca was actually there on the set! Which brings me to my next point,

Number Two: Animatronics have superior stage-presence to purely-CGI characters.


When a CGI character interacts with a flesh-and-blood actor, in almost every case the actor was playing to an empty room, or a blank green-screen. As any actor will tell you, playing a part, any part at all, without another human presence to judge by and interact with, is an extremely difficult endeavor. Even if there was a man in a skintight greensuit standing where the monster's going to be in the final version, it's not the same as actually having the monster standing right in front of you, roaring and spitting venom in your face.

Number Three: Animatronic characters have a warmer, more human appearance.
Even if the character in question is not human at all, animatronics often induce much greater feelings of affection in audiences than any CGI character. Because the machines are bound by the same laws of physics as we are, their motions, by definition, look real and natural. While animators are busy trying to figure out how to convey a sense of weight and solidity in their creations, all a puppeteer needs to do is hit the "ON" switch and play around for a few minutes.



Furthermore, the fact that a puppeteer (or team of puppeteers) controls the machine's every motion means that all their motions will be infinitely more human. The animators don't need to search for the key to simulating natural movement; it's sitting right in front of them, waggling its ears and making faces at them.