Vashon goes to the movies

i’m back, if you’re keeping track. i’ve been off gathering wool and nuggets and i think i have something to say again. what comes to mind at the moment are words from david byrne and the song ‘psycho killer’, which go something like: ‘ when i have nothing to say, my lips are sealed- say something once, why say it again?’

what has really been baking my noodle lately is the hooplah around james cameron’s latest ode to himself- that would be avatar. what has actually been stirring the juices here is a spin on the byrne quote above and something i’ve noticed as i’ve dug deeper into filmland, and that is the issue of already been there. i have been resurfacing memories of art school and the notion that it has all been done before. what i have found of late, having completed two short films for film school, is that in many ways it has all been done before. i was recently given copies of some old black and white classics- sunrise by murnau and chaplin’s modern times, and there i found some of the basics of what i had been filming about- a different context and situation of course- different, but somehow the same. as i watched and saw these parallels i was reminded of a time more than thirty years ago when i was slumping further and further into my seat as i realized that the scene i was watching from one of ingmar bergman’s classics was eerily the same as a dream i’d had the night before- there does seem to be evidence of some kind of universal, collective unconsciousness- i guess it will be amazing when it finally wakes up.

one might be wondering where this is meant to be going. what got me spinning in this groove was actually a viewing a few days ago of district 9, neill blomkamp’s avatar on earth. at this point i hadn’t seen cameron’s magnum opus- a situation i rectified last night at our own vashon theatre. what was bothering me previous to that was the notion that cameron had rewritten the book on computer generated effects and that this would change the face of cinema. what i saw in district 9, however, was that the cg book really didn’t need any revisons- blomkamp had aliens running around on his set, or at least it sure looked that way, and for an eighth of the cost of a trip to pandora.

as far as having been done before, as i recall it there was this small animated feature titled fern gully, which pitted the native inhabitants of an enchanted rain forests against the ravaging, land-raping avarice of the corporate state. on the other hand and in the land of the real, a small documentary with a big message by filmmakers george and beth gage tells the story of two native american sisters who were in a 30 year battle over the rights to their/shoshone land in nevada. it was our own government, nudged on by mining interests, who were the antagonists in this mini-epic. sound familiar? appropriately named american outrage, this doc brings the real message home about corporate greed, without indulging in massive consumption of production budgets. it tells essentially the same story without the idyllic floating mountains, beautiful blue people or the epic battle scenes. maybe more people would be concerened about the plight of the dann sisters (actually one has since departed) if  they rode pterodactyls and ran naked through the sagebrush, just like the na’avi.

i was asked how i liked avatar soon after watching it- my initial response was that it made me angry, for the above reasons and more. on the other side, perhaps my strongest memory of that nearly three hour excursion was that of the forest spirit represented by what could only be described as a milkweed seed gene-spliced with a jellyfish. i thought this was a bit of genius. the bioluminescent flora of the forests of pandora were amazing as well, but some of the late night e-wire extravaganzas i’ve seen at burning man, while not organic, as expansive or as  interactive, were nearly as awe inspiring. on the other hand, a late night paddle across tramp harbor in late summer with a glowing v being generated by the bow wave, and sparks igniting in the water to each side with each bioluminescent paddle stroke, will always out do any cinematic sleight of hand.

so, one might say- got any other movie buzzes that need a good killing? i think i’m done for now, but there’s plenty more where that came from.