So I saw Aeon Flux on DVD the other night. Given the mediocre reviews and lack of box-office love the film, um, enjoyed, I really didn't expect much. I wanted to see it mainly because of the production design I saw in the commercials. And because of Charlize Theron. And (okay okay) because I'm something of a scifi nut.
What I didn't quite expect was the heart of the story being driven by female characters. As you know, the norm in sci-fi movies is to have maybe a couple of interesting, perhaps powerful women who have their moments of personal power, but in the decisive cumination leave matters to the (male) hero. Not so in this movie. Aeon is unmistakeably the motivator of just about all the action here, and she's the one who comes through again and again, all the way up to the conclusion. (And, for the most part, the other major action characters are women as well.)
Charlize Theron brings a lot of presence to her performance. Her intensity practically leaps off the screen right at you. You can see it even in the NLE exports (i.e., raw out of the editing system) used in the making-of featurettes on the DVD. She doesn't phone in the performance, like some actors would in a similar movie, and she doesn't go for the easy campy out. She plays it straight, and as a result she carries this movie. Without her and the wonderful-yet-minimalist production values, this would be yet another forgettable B-movie you see only on the Internet Movie Database but never in the store, let alone theatres.
She's also astonishingly graceful in what is an extremely physical performance. I imagine the guys will appreciate her outfits even more. Very skin-tight, boys. But I thought more interesting was what she does, and how she does it. Aeon is a character of intention and purpose -- which, of course, is perfect for a story where all the certainties are not quite what they seem.
Still, first and foremost it's an action movie. The culmination isn't all that unusual. Explosions, guns -- lots of guns (though not the orgy The Matrix offers).
No, Aeon Flux is not a scifi classic. But it's a heckuva lot better than most of the stuff that passes for scifi on the big screen these days. And it's nice to see a women's vision of the future, without the usual phallic imagery and gizmo obsession. (I assume the fact that the producer, director, storyboard artist and star are women plays into that.) It's worth seeing, in my book.
Unfortunately, the website is yet another web 1.0 wonder, replete with Flash domination, un-asked-for music (so don't go there with your speakers turned up, or you'll rattle your monitor off the desk) and the usual brochure-ware offerings. If it weren't for some deliberate search-results skewing by Google, I doubt the site would even merit any pagerank. (Too many generations of website cloning, it seems. Wink wink. It'll make sense if you've seen the movie.)
]]>So I saw Aeon Flux on DVD the other night. Given the mediocre reviews and lack of box-office love the film, um, enjoyed, I really didn't expect much. I wanted to see it mainly because of the production design I saw in the commercials. And because of Charlize Theron. And (okay okay) because I'm something of a scifi nut.
What I didn't quite expect was the heart of the story being driven by female characters. As you know, the norm in sci-fi movies is to have maybe a couple of interesting, perhaps powerful women who have their moments of personal power, but in the decisive cumination leave matters to the (male) hero. Not so in this movie. Aeon is unmistakeably the motivator of just about all the action here, and she's the one who comes through again and again, all the way up to the conclusion. (And, for the most part, the other major action characters are women as well.)
Charlize Theron brings a lot of presence to her performance. Her intensity practically leaps off the screen right at you. You can see it even in the NLE exports (i.e., raw out of the editing system) used in the making-of featurettes on the DVD. She doesn't phone in the performance, like some actors would in a similar movie, and she doesn't go for the easy campy out. She plays it straight, and as a result she carries this movie. Without her and the wonderful-yet-minimalist production values, this would be yet another forgettable B-movie you see only on the Internet Movie Database but never in the store, let alone theatres.
She's also astonishingly graceful in what is an extremely physical performance. I imagine the guys will appreciate her outfits even more. Very skin-tight, boys. But I thought more interesting was what she does, and how she does it. Aeon is a character of intention and purpose -- which, of course, is perfect for a story where all the certainties are not quite what they seem.
Still, first and foremost it's an action movie. The culmination isn't all that unusual. Explosions, guns -- lots of guns (though not the orgy The Matrix offers).
No, Aeon Flux is not a scifi classic. But it's a heckuva lot better than most of the stuff that passes for scifi on the big screen these days. And it's nice to see a women's vision of the future, without the usual phallic imagery and gizmo obsession. (I assume the fact that the producer, director, storyboard artist and star are women plays into that.) It's worth seeing, in my book.
Unfortunately, the website is yet another web 1.0 wonder, replete with Flash domination, un-asked-for music (so don't go there with your speakers turned up, or you'll rattle your monitor off the desk) and the usual brochure-ware offerings. If it weren't for some deliberate search-results skewing by Google, I doubt the site would even merit any pagerank. (Too many generations of website cloning, it seems. Wink wink. It'll make sense if you've seen the movie.)
]]>But what I saw wasn't the real movie. Sergio Leone made widescreen movies, and he used the entire frame. What I saw, with pan-and-scan and interstitial advertising, was a Cliff's Notes version of the film.
Having recently watched on my 20" iMac the DVD of the restored version of the film, I can say it is a different movie. The iMac is not HDTV, and standard DVDs, though they have much more resolution than televisions can provide, are not HD DVD -- but even so, the movie offered what a lot of more recent movies do not:
Cinema.
Recent flicks like Batman Begins and even the well-done Good Night and Good Luck seem to lack the cinematic sense. Perhaps they're too much products of the TV age, shot for pan-and-scan and edited to keep things moving, rather than to give the next piece of the visual story.
And it really shows on high-resolution widescreen presentations. Last year's talk was the purportedly incredible effects of King Kong. I had problems with the commercials, where Kong is batting cars around like Tonka trucks, when really, if you think about it, it should have been more like batting around Christmas ornaments. (How is a car that shatters upon 60mph impact with a wall going to not shatter when a wall-like hand smacks it at 60mph?). No, I was not impressed. It looked like The Incredible Hulk with fur.
Even so, I was pretty shocked when I saw how fake Peter Jackson's film looks on HDTV. Perhaps it's the contrast compression or the flicker effect, but really, Kong looked like a cartoon. (Oh, the ideas, like the dinosaur stampede down the ravine, seemed interesting. But realitic?)
By contrast, in another example of the power of cinema trumping the power of special effects, a much lower-budget movie that plays well on high resolution screens is the cult classic actioner Mad Max (which without the appalling American dubbing actually had some indie movie charm). George Miller's sequel, The Road Warrior, also holds up -- as do much older, cinematic, visual films like Lawrence of Arabia, The Searchers, and even the staid 2001: A Space Odyssey (whose special effects amounted to clear plexiglas, some inventive stage construction and old-fashioned matte photography.
How well will today's special-effects epics be regarded in 2 or 3 decades, as the technology gets better?
As HDTV catches on, and more and more people watch movies on screens that recapture a bit of the cinematic aesthetic, it's my sincere hope that we'll see more movies that use visual language to tell the story. The overwrought, overscored, over-effected hyperviolence of today's epics (which are always made with an eye directed at the almost-square 19" television set) already leave me tired. Maybe that's why, rather than see the latest effects fantasy from the boy-executives in Hollywood, it's The Devil Wears Prada that gets me out of the house for the first time since Master and Commander.
If the Hollywood movie distribution system ever grows up and gets back to making cinema, I'll celebrate with trips to the movie theatre. Until then, I'll stick to my DVDs and wait for the convergence. And remember not to hold my breath.
]]>But what I saw wasn't the real movie. Sergio Leone made widescreen movies, and he used the entire frame. What I saw, with pan-and-scan and interstitial advertising, was a Cliff's Notes version of the film.
Having recently watched on my 20" iMac the DVD of the restored version of the film, I can say it is a different movie. The iMac is not HDTV, and standard DVDs, though they have much more resolution than televisions can provide, are not HD DVD -- but even so, the movie offered what a lot of more recent movies do not:
Cinema.
Recent flicks like Batman Begins and even the well-done Good Night and Good Luck seem to lack the cinematic sense. Perhaps they're too much products of the TV age, shot for pan-and-scan and edited to keep things moving, rather than to give the next piece of the visual story.
And it really shows on high-resolution widescreen presentations. Last year's talk was the purportedly incredible effects of King Kong. I had problems with the commercials, where Kong is batting cars around like Tonka trucks, when really, if you think about it, it should have been more like batting around Christmas ornaments. (How is a car that shatters upon 60mph impact with a wall going to not shatter when a wall-like hand smacks it at 60mph?). No, I was not impressed. It looked like The Incredible Hulk with fur.
Even so, I was pretty shocked when I saw how fake Peter Jackson's film looks on HDTV. Perhaps it's the contrast compression or the flicker effect, but really, Kong looked like a cartoon. (Oh, the ideas, like the dinosaur stampede down the ravine, seemed interesting. But realitic?)
By contrast, in another example of the power of cinema trumping the power of special effects, a much lower-budget movie that plays well on high resolution screens is the cult classic actioner Mad Max (which without the appalling American dubbing actually had some indie movie charm). George Miller's sequel, The Road Warrior, also holds up -- as do much older, cinematic, visual films like Lawrence of Arabia, The Searchers, and even the staid 2001: A Space Odyssey (whose special effects amounted to clear plexiglas, some inventive stage construction and old-fashioned matte photography.
How well will today's special-effects epics be regarded in 2 or 3 decades, as the technology gets better?
As HDTV catches on, and more and more people watch movies on screens that recapture a bit of the cinematic aesthetic, it's my sincere hope that we'll see more movies that use visual language to tell the story. The overwrought, overscored, over-effected hyperviolence of today's epics (which are always made with an eye directed at the almost-square 19" television set) already leave me tired. Maybe that's why, rather than see the latest effects fantasy from the boy-executives in Hollywood, it's The Devil Wears Prada that gets me out of the house for the first time since Master and Commander.
If the Hollywood movie distribution system ever grows up and gets back to making cinema, I'll celebrate with trips to the movie theatre. Until then, I'll stick to my DVDs and wait for the convergence. And remember not to hold my breath.
]]>