Best Movies Of The Year in a Few Words

Best movies of the year, little analysis:

10. Tangerine
Shot on iPhones, so raw, but also funny, tense, moving.

9. Brooklyn
Quiet tension as big/important as any violent thriller.

8. Bridge of Spies
See previous entry, and Spielberg DOES IT AGAIN!

7. The Revenant
The hard work is on the screen.

6. It Follows
A serene horror film, eerily beautiful.

5. Spy
Rose Byrne in everything, now.

4. Ex Machina
Frankenstein for Apple era.

3. Spotlight
Great journalism, movie.

2. The Hateful 8
Excruciatingly amazing.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road
C'mon.


Other stuff:

Outside of critical reflection:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
I can't really put Star Wars on any list. I can see its flaws and holes and whatever else makes it not very unique. Whatever. I was predisposed to get all giddy at hearing the theme and stuff like "Chewy, we're home." I'm going to watch it more often than any other movie on the previous list (save maybe Mad Max).

Best surprise:
The Peanuts Movie
If you got all up-in-arms about the uses and abuses of Charles Schultz's timeless characters, as I did when I saw the first trailer, don't worry. This is a movie that succeeds in using the good-natured humour and philosophy of Peanuts in a way that celebrates Charlie Brown and the gang, with absolutely no Madagascar-esque pop-culture B.S. for the "in-the-know" parents. Even if it gets some of the basic facts wrong - I get why they put Linus and Lucy in the same class, but come on - it's not enough to sink it.

Biggest disappointments:
Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man
These movies stank. I eat this Marvel Cinematic Universe garbage up with a spoon, but Ant-Man wasn't very funny or all that original, as I was hoping with this different type of hero. And Age of Ultron just rehashed everything from the first Avengers. You could almost see Joss Whedon getting super tired of all this stuff half-way through. No longer will I get my hopes up for all-CGI action hero blockbusters.

Most looking forward to for 2017: 
Captain America: Civil War
It looks really cool.

Reel History 15: Oil and the Wrath of God: There Will Be Blood

Oil and the Wrath of God: There Will Be Blood

"I have a competition in me; I want no one else to succeed."

Daniel Plainview

"What is the chief end of man?--to get rich. In what way?--dishonestly if we can; honestly if we must."

Mark Twain, 1871

"Whoever loves money never has enough;

whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income.  

This too is meaningless."

Ecclesiastes 5:10

There Will Be Blood is a deeply religious epic. It does not comment on metaphysics, and though our pastor antagonist is made to proclaim that God is a superstition, the movie doesn't care to make an argument for or against this statement. What it is is a commentary on the advancement of America's religious society, and what happens when greed bludgeons God to death with a bowling pin. But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

The pantomime currently playing out on America's right is the movie's lessons in action. Candidates are racing to humble themselves unto the voting consumer, hoping to be seen as the most authentic Christian free marketeer. The former label is losing its power this electoral season, and not because of any secular conspiracy to sand-blast God off every public monument. Those who are offering themselves as God's preferred candidate are being left behind in a cloud of acceptable bigotries and faux-history, the very things they helped popularize. Ted Cruz says that "any president who doesn't begin his days on his knees isn't fit to be president," his wife adding that "the God of Christianity is the God of freedom, of individual liberty, of choice and of consequence." Meanwhile, Donald Trump is winning primary after primary, mumbling out some form of religiosity as much to protect his personal brand from his own past as to get the Christian vote. He doesn't really need to, though, because he's covered nicely by playing to the base's inherent hatred for Muslims and Mexicans. Trump and Cruz and the rest of them perpetuate the fiction that individuality and enterprise are Christian principles, while the collective is still in need of protection from the secular and un-Biblical, which are deemed "un-American." Trump just doesn't feel the need to humble himself to any god that isn't himself, the Christianity of America making it easy for this billionaire to get away with it. Regardless of its outcome, these candidates continue a century's old political game, and There Will Be Blood is a fable about this game's beginning. 

The movie is about the rise and fall of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a silver prospector turned oil magnate whose ambition is only matched by his nemesis, Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). Sunday runs the church on his family's property, a property that sits on an "ocean of oil." The competition between the two, and their many attempts to control the other, form the dramatic basis of the movie. But does the movie's writer and director, Paul Thomas Anderson, say it's about?

"The politics of power, amassing power, amassing wealth," he told Marc Maron on the WTF podcast. "What's the difference between survival and ambition? They are born with something above and beyond. You feel there was never going to be enough. The agreement between the godless and the faithful, struck a bargain, but always suspicious. [It's] the birth of American industry, and the hustle is a part of that."

This hustle, this agreement between the godless and the faithful, can trace its beginning to two men who gained wealth and power despite their religion, not because of it. California was the place for new religious movements in the early 20th Century, as mass migration gave many a preacher and snake oil salesman new audiences. But it wasn't so much the migrants moving into California that gave modern American Protestantism the resources it needed to thrive and spread, rather the wealth that was in the ground. Currently, the state is third in American oil production, behind Texas and North Dakota, but in 1903, it was the leading state. The late 1800s saw a boom in oil production and a scramble for land, and by 1920, seven years before TWBB's conclusion, production had reached 77 million barrels. Oil was, and is, big business in California.

This big business was behind a major series of essays published by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, authored by some of the leading Protestant theologians of the time. These were a stirring defence of conservative Christianity in the face of a number of ungodly movements: modernism, historical criticism, evolution, etc. Three million books were distributed, for free, to church leaders around the county, setting the course for the militancy of American Christian fundamentalism and the acceptable opinions of the future. "These books were a public symbol of the coherence and continuity of the interdenominational movement known as conservative Protestant evangelicalism," says the institute, now known as Biola University, of their crowning achievement, The Fundamentals. They provided the intellectual basis for a movement that would find a larger audience with the First Red Scare, when people clung to religion and free enterprise as antidotes to godless Bolshevism.  

Supporting Biola University and The Fundamentals were two brothers, Lyman and Milton Stewart. They had made their money in the Union Oil Company of California, and they meant to use it for God. Out of their influence came a new generation of theologians who opposed modernism and supported Christian governance. Attempting to spread their very conservative evangelicalism, Milton funded missionary work in China; it was Lyman who had the most impact on the United States. In addition to The Fundamentals, he published and distributed William Eugene Blackstone's Jesus is Coming, a book that helped popularize a Biblically literal, Zionist millennialism. Millennialism is the belief that Christ will come back and literally rule a Messianic kingdom on earth for a thousand years, and without this belief, "there could not possibly be a Billy Graham, Oral Roberts, PTL Club, Jerry Falwell, and Moral Majority, or any of a myriad of similar personages and movements," says Gary Wills in his book Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America. Without the Stewarts, there could not possibly have been millennialism.

It's into this history that There Will Be Blood digs deep. The director is sort of obtuse about the philosophy behind TWBB, but if it has a political motivation, I would interpret it as saying that the brothers Stewart have failed and were always doomed to fail. To combine wealth and power with the inherent humility of Christianity is a flawed plan, one that only helps the wealthy. Two scenes betray this message, and they are connected thematically by the force of the Third Movement of Brahms' Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 77. 

The first begins with Eli asking Daniel his permission to bless the newly erected oil well; Daniel agrees to mollify Eli and his church, but at the last minute usurps his prayer dedication, instead taking the time to make a pointed reference to Eli's abusive father. This is the first instance of direct conflict between Daniel and the church, and the back and forth becomes increasingly desperate as they try and get what they need from the other. Daniel even agrees to be baptized in order to obtain a crucial parcel of land owned by one of the congregation's most devout members. It's a scene that not only shows Daniel's deviousness, but also the movie's sense of humour, which I don't think gets enough credit. 

The second scene I'm referring to ends the movie: Eli, who has been out of Daniel's life for many years on "mission work," returns to the secluded millionaire a penitent sinner, grovelling for a deal that would give him the money he needs to continue his work. Instead of money, Daniel gives him a cold truth: he "drank his milkshake", sucking the oil right from under Eli's land. He then bludgeons the snivelling Eli to death with a bowling pin, the pastor simply an annoyance to him now. "I'm finished," he tells his butler in weary triumph, the final words of the movie moving right into Brahms. It's a powerhouse finale. 

Warning: this one's a teensy bit brutal. 

It's a finale that resonates today. The Protestant elite of the Seventies and Eighties, those ancestors of The Fundamentals, believed that by controlling the political discourse, they could make the sin of greed a virtue. TWBB dismisses all this as foolhardy and evil. American Christian culture has paved the way for someone like Donald Trump, who only has to fake his way through a baptism to get that much-coveted land. The recent scuffle between Trump and His Holiness Pope Francis, promptly followed by Trump winning the Evangelical vote in South Carolina, highlights what makes American Christianity a different take on religion altogether. It believes that wealth can be subjugated and turned into a useful tool to spread the good news.

After all, America is the land of prosperity gospels, Joel Osteen and John Maxwell, a place where the camel can go through the eye of a needle and come out a superior person. The poor are unemployed because "benefits keep people from going and finding jobs," says indicted Congressman and noted scumbag Tom DeLay. We have "rewarded laziness and called it welfare," prays one minister before the Kansas legislature, never mind that Jesus asked his followers to sell all they owned and give the money to the poor. Most Republicans believe that poor people are poor because of "a lack of effort on his or her part," while the wealthy are wealthy because of "hard work." They have neglected the most humble teachings of Jesus in order to accept the most bravado parts of the American myth as Truth.

And that's because the godless and the faithful are not so different when it comes to power. Comparing Daniel and Eli, we see two fixed entities, the stasis of their characters revealing so much. Their ambitions, goals, and ideas never change, even after they've succeeded in taking what's theirs. What changes is circumstance, the alienation that comes with constantly going after more. After casting off his adopted son, H.W., who he accuses of being a competitor after H.W. decides to go off on his own, Daniel is alone. Eli is alone, too, bankrupt and scheming, struggling to make it as a preacher who wants nothing more than to feed his ego with money. Money to buy the church, money to attract the congregants, money to be the charismatic preacher of the faith.

In the end, it consumes him, much as it's consuming America today.



Sources:

Head and Heart: A History of Christianity in America by Garry Wills 

https://philosophynow.org/issues/74/There_Will_Be_Blood

http://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi-bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SDU18911017.2.61

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-moyers/bill-moyers-and-ross-dout_b_1441744.html 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals

http://now.biola.edu/news/article/2013/feb/25/biolas-fundamentals-still-relevant-today/

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/torrey_ra/fundamentals/71.cfm 

The Awful Magic of Paring Down Your Book Collection

I am not a wealthy man.

This means, among other money-related things, that I do not live in a big house with a massive library, with books that can only be reached by sliding ladders and big comfy chairs in which to read them. I am a man with limited space, and it was high time I did something about reclaiming some of it from myself. After all, regaining land is in my blood; just ask the North Sea how the Dutch go at taking what's theirs.

Now, this comes right after Christmas, my birthday, and a sort-of kind-of book-buying binge late in December, so my work is cut out for me. I need motivation. The infamous Marie Kondo seems to know the score. Kondo is about as ruthless as they come, a professional tidier and author who claims to own only 30 books, some of which probably aren't even her own (her most famous is The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, currently cluttering up more than 2 million bookshelves around the world). Reading interviews with her and reviews of her book, you get the sense Marie Kondo isn't so much a professional with a unorthodox job as she is the leader of a cult. To her, clutter is an affliction, and she professes to be something akin to the cure. She is the Bane to my bookshelves' Gotham.

"Surrounded by the things I love." "Putting my life in order by putting my things in order." Kondo's messages seem pretty good, and I think I can aspire to them. Stuff is just stuff, right? You're conned by market forces and societal pressure into thinking you need a certain amount to fit in with the Western lifestyle, so you place attachments on things. And if tidying up by losing these attachments is a magical art, then it's something I am born with. If Harry Potter has taught me anything, it's that a book in and of itself can't teach you magic. You are born with or without it, you're a wizard or a Muggle. I need to find out which one I am, because Lord knows a half-giant in a motorcycle isn't coming to cart me off to the Hogwarts School of Getting Rid of Shit.

If you look at my collection, you'll notice it isn't exactly huge. I'm sure many reading this have far larger collections, and given the one-upmanship common in nerds, will cast aspersions on mine not being big ENOUGH, let alone something that needs cutting down. But I am a man who lives in an apartment where the ceiling fan is a constant threat to my brain function. I'll have to move this July, and books are heavy.

A collage of books (note: that is not Nazi propaganda in the middle picture)

A book collection is harder to scale down because of what the book means. The book is, to many people, a fetishized object. Not just certain books, like a good book you enjoyed, but the book in general. A collection of words put on pages and bound together. Neil Gaiman believes books have genders and that books are sacred. Makes sense: they have their own personalities, their own ideas - they are, at the very least, the most valuable by-product of other people's minds. 

I'm inclined towards Gaiman's position, because I love books, but only inclined, which makes me susceptible to other reasoning. And so comes to the process of tidying. I'll need to discover that magic within me, and so to make the process easier, I broke down potential goners into four categories:

1. Books I don't need
2. Books I won't ever read again / won't ever get to
3. Books in garbage condition
4. Books I don't like 

The first category could take care of everything. If I can mercilessly send everything I don't need to the book gulag, then who cares about the rest of the categories?

So then: what constitutes need? I assume I only really need what Abraham Maslow tells me I need in his neat little pyramid; I'm not smart enough to break into some high-minded original idea of what need is. If books don't fit somewhere in the hierarchy of needs, then out they go.

The powerful grain storage building of needs

Breaking it down: books don't constitute a physiological need, because they are very low in essential vitamins and minerals; they might not meet my safety needs, except for maybe a large, heavy one for protection; they don't really increase my feeling of love and belonging, even though many do feel a bit like family. On the face of it, that seems stupid.

Esteem works; I do take some pride in my book collection, and the knowledge therein helps me feel free and self-confident. I like discussing books with fellow book lovers, and yes, there's some showing off, can't deny really that. And owning certain books does help me feel self-actualized, in that being a book person forms part of my identity! So there is an establishment of need: I don't need books to live or survive, but I do need them to thrive and be the kind of person I want to be.

So I won't be tossing out all my books. Relieving. But this ruthless thing won't be very easy.

But do they need to be physical? Maybe I don't need books, but what's in the books. I own a lot of the classics, only some of which I have read more than once. The thing with classics is, all of these books one could get at a local library or for a buck at a used bookstore, pretty much whenever one wanted, whenever one has the urge to reread them. And many of them are now in the public domain. I could just go ahead and store all the classics I would like to read later in life on a digital reader and save myself some shelf space. Out goes Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights, Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn, and I've got some more shelf space!

To answer the previous paragraph's introductory question: yes. I made a short-sighted Kindle purchase a year or two ago, and I still have never completed a novel on it. This means there's another need involved, in that I need a physical copy of the book in my hands to actually read. I like the book as an object. I like seeing the progress physically, not represented as a percentage. I also like lugging them around, and the feeling of accomplishment when you've read an extra-super long one. It's like a trophy - Captain Ahab may never have reined in Moby-Dick, but it's like I've got him stuffed and sitting in my living room. Besides, I love the covers. I have a real weakness for Penguin editions. Look at them, they're beautiful!

A fuzzy photo of some of them

And though there's no real need to keep the ubiquitous classics, it'll be strange to want to read Jane Eyre again and then have to go out of my way to get a hold of a copy. Having them around makes me more inclined to reread them, too, and these are books that demand more than one go. 

And so Moby-Dick et al stay. Even if I won't reread them any time soon, it's almost guaranteed I will in the future.

This brings us to the second category: books I won't ever read again, or books I won't ever read in the first place. This one could also take care of things neatly. "Look at your bookshelves, Kondo decrees in her most emotionally fraught chapter, and accept that all those books you haven't read yet are books you will never read," says Laura Miller in her Slate review of Kondo's book. Having a penchant for lists that will lay unfinished as soon as my brain moves on to something else, I have a list of books in order of what I'll be reading for the next year. This could be a good way to see what to save. But if a book is not on that list, and I've read it before, and I can truly, deeply be cruel and admit I won't read it ever, well, what's the real point in keeping it?

And do I really need a 900 page biography of George Washington? A complete history of English-speaking peoples by Winston Churchill? A 1100-page book about New York City? C'mon. Put together, I've read maybe 20 pages of all of these. These will only impede my goal of becoming calm and living a simple life. My failure to read these books will only clutter up my life. Marie Kondo would toss them in a heartbeat.

Let's be honest: buying books is a disease. It's almost pathological. You can rationalize every purchase ten different ways in your mind, even more when you're low on funds. The feeling associated with buying a book is almost as great as the feeling of finishing a book. You see the same excuses used by record collectors, too, so maybe there's a beauty in holding onto something that is competing with technology and ultimately losing. Problem is, records are only a tiny fraction as thick as books.

So yes, I hoard books, but most of what I hoard is nonfiction, which have a definite edge on fiction as a kind of book to keep. It's not like you can actually store every bit of information found within thick nonfiction books in your head. With fiction, you just remember the gist of the storyline, themes that resonated with you, passages you liked, your favourite characters, simple things. Take down some notes if you don't want to write in the margins, and you're good to go. Reading a book about World War II means you've got to remember a hundred different dates, battles, and generals, in order to make sense of this world-defining event in history. So keeping the book about WWII makes more sense, because it can serve as reference. And who knows where I'll be at? Gigantic biographies take time to soak in; you can't just dash off 900 pages of Thomas Jefferson's life in an afternoon. Get real. 

Besides, Roger Ebert said it best: books do furnish a life. "You just never know. One day I may -- need is the word I use -- to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed." It's possible, and best to hold out for the future. 

So I've decided to keep Washington and Churchill et al. What's next?

Moby-Dick, we've decided is staying, but it deserves a spot for more than just that I like to hold on to it as a trophy. Apart from a cracked spine, it is in immaculate condition. I read it every day after work for a while, so it probably never left my home. And then there's my copy of East of Eden. It's battered from being carried around in my backpack, every time I open it another piece of the cover falls off, it's not really all that special - no super special cover, I didn't receive it as a gift, it's not signed by Steinbeck himself. I actually bought it at Value Village. It's about as common an edition of the book as one could find.

I could get rid of the ratty books now, and when the urge to read them again struck me, I could pick up a new, slick-looking edition! Saves me space in the meantime, and I'll be building a new and improved library when I've got a larger pad.

It's a nice idea, but here's where Gaiman's ideas start making sense. This admittedly crappy-looking book is the edition I read. East of Eden is my favourite book of all time. It's sprawling, gorgeously written, and dives deep into faith, class, and meaning in religion at a time when I was doing the same. It was a novel I needed. I could never part with the copy that revealed to me so much wisdom.

And that's why I want to continue owning books, and what makes paring down the library so difficult. I don't agree with Neil Gaiman about the book being a sacred object, though the degree to which I disagree makes the disagreement pointless. I don't think all books are sacred; I think my books are sacred. Books become something special once you've released the story. The act of reading, and what it can do for you, is the special part. A book is a book until you've read it. Then it becomes a part of you. Or, if you hate it, it's just another book, but it still fills you with some sort of understanding. A local chain bookstore could burn down, and it would be awful, but I'd still be less broken up about it than if my childhood collection of beat-up Calvin and Hobbes books was destroyed.

So East of Eden, and all like it, stay.

So I've determined to keep books I actually like. Bully for me. What about books I hate? I read a lot within certain parameters, so I did or will enjoy most of what I own (something I might want to work on). But two books I recently read stand out as rather unpleasant experiences: The Martian by Andy Weir and Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee. The former was unexpectedly disliked: it's hyped as one of the best science fiction books in recent memory, touted as funny and interesting and did I mention it's funny? I mostly hated it, the method of storytelling only undercutting the tension, and it was not nearly as hilarious as it's said to be. The less said about ...Watchman the better. So should they stay?

Should a personal library be uniformly books you enjoyed or would enjoy? Probably not. Mark Twain hated Jane Austen, but when he starts the famous quote with, "Whenever I take up Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility..."* you know he's still reading them, probably from his own collection. 

But Mark Twain was super wealthy. He had the space to keep all those wretched Jane Austen novels! Maybe in the future, when space in not a limited commodity, I can indeed hold on to books I actively disliked. But for now, The Martian and those similar to it can go. Given how well-liked the book is, it might find a great home.  

Twain's personal library (via ShortList)

So in the end, I could only bear to part with things I already have no positive connection to. While that's progress, I don't think it's much in the way of decluttering. I'm sorry, Marie, I'm just a Muggle. Reading your lessons through cursory Internet research did not convince me to be as ruthless as you are said to be. I am still a sad sack who fills his inanimate objects with meaning. I could never be as cruel as you.

I don't think you'd mind, really. I have failed, but my house "won't blow up." You'd think me silly, but you'd forgive my insolence.

Let's hope my back will forgive me come July.





* Full quote: 

Whenever I take up "Pride and Prejudice" or "Sense and Sensibility," I feel like a barkeeper entering the Kingdom of Heaven. I mean, I feel as he would probably feel, would almost certainly feel. I am quite sure I know what his sensations would be -- and his private comments. He would be certain to curl his lip, as those ultra-good Presbyterians went filing self-complacently along. ...

She makes me detest all her people, without reserve. Is that her intention? It is not believable. Then is it her purpose to make the reader detest her people up to the middle of the book and like them in the rest of the chapters? That could be. That would be high art. It would be worth while, too. Some day I will examine the other end of her books and see.

11 Times JJ Abrams Couldn't Even

JJ Abrams directed Star Trek. Boom. Crazy right? But then a very large corporation saw he could make them marginally more money and maybe not ruin their precious money machine by competently directing space battles and was like, "come over to the dark side" ha ha. That Very Large Corporation was Disney, and they own...Star Wars. Yeah. So this guy's like, I'm directing Star Trek AND Star Wars? 

I'd wager a quarter he could. Not. Even. Here are 11 more times, all of which involve Star Trek and Star Wars and ignore his other creative outlets, that JJ Abrams could not even. 

1. That time he was at Comic Con and was like, "the Starship Enterprise is like THIS big whoa man."

He also may have been talking about the Millennium Falcon idk when this is from, but it's not as big. Not THAT big. 

2. That time he taught R2-D2 how to read and was like, "I'm teaching a robot how to read WTHeck where did that fish come from"

3. That time he was doing some charity stuff in the desert and was like, "man, this camel muppet looks STONED haha I can't even"

4. That time ball droid wouldn't sit still so he could teach him/her how to read and was like "I'm just trying to give you the gift of literacy please I can't even"

5. When he got the job for this thing he hated as a kid and was like "I'm gonna punk all of you and make you hate the hedgehog guy through cultural saturation haha so many emotions"

6. That time he ruined a man's camera just becasuse he's a big hollywood director who hated Star Trek as a kid and he can't even handle all this attention right now

7. "I have a spaceship AND a spaceship chauffeur I can't even FATHOM this oops sorry Jeeves"

8. That time he used is directorial/dictatorial powers to invade the Walt Disney World Resort and Theme Park so he and his family could have a good time. Couldn't handle that at all

9. JJ Abrams is the creator/co-creator of many original properties such as Felicity, Alias, Lost, and Fringe, all of which have large fan bases and have give many hours of entertainment to a very wide range of audiences. All you'll see here are Star Trek and Star Wars gifs. Other properties he did not create have taken over his life. How little even he must have I don't know

10. TFW you get those sweet sweet Jon Stewart applauses 

11. That feeling when you'll never win an Oscar for your work because it involves furry space men but at least you can stand next to a guy who's won one and then you look into the light. You've been dead this whole time.

All hail the new king of content. 

Frankenstein and Ex Machina

I can't get the novel Frankenstein out of my head. I read it months ago and it just sits in my brain, rolling back and forth, trying to connect with every bit of culture I consume. It's a book I long thought was simply an early piece of horror that inspired movies and pop culture so far removed from the actual story that they literally only share a name. Then I read the book.

Holy crap. And I don't think there's a book out there that speaks more to the relationship between science and humanity than any fiction out there. Well, I've only read maybe a handful of books that would fit that description, but Frankenstein may be the quintessential one.

Which brings me to Ex Machina.  It's a remarkable sci-fi film, and though it feels small because of it's setting and the number or characters, it is bigger and bolder than any of the effects-laden Marvel movies or recent space operas (note: I love the Marvel movies and have seen the last 7 in theatres). It carries the existential weight of Frankenstein and puts it in the 21st century. It is what Frankenstein, in my brain, was looking for.

That "existential weight" is the creation of something human through artificial means- something that can think and feel without the need to have been born through the same process as the average person. In Frankenstein, it's Adam, Victor Frankenstein's monster who was cobbled together out of body parts and jolted into life (through "galvanism", where electricity "galvanizes organisms into life"); in Ex Machina, it's Ava, the artificially intelligent robot brought to "life" by Oscar Isaac's character Nathan. With Ex Machina, though, is not really a horror movie, though I think the horror of Frankenstein is lost over the ages and the more extreme takes on it. Actually, and here are some spoilers for Ex Machina, the movie ends on a more horrific note: Ava tricking Caleb, the man brought in by Nathan to see whether or not she passes the Turing Test, into letting her out, killing Nathan, leaving Caleb sealed in the home where she was trapped, and taking the last chopper out. Adam in Frankenstein is actually begins as a sensitive soul, his murderous rage coming from the realization that he will be inherently rejected by society and his creator. Ava puts on a mask and becomes human; Adam has no recourse, and the monstrous life he earned just as rightfully as his creator, is doomed.

Ex Machina also comes out in a society where cloning and artificial intelligence are household words; in Mary Shelley's time, there were far more unknowns in science, and the word "scientist" wasn't even coined yet ("natural philosopher" was the term of the day). It makes sense, then, that they both create unease in different ways, Ex Machina with its grounded possibilities and Frankenstein with the sheer unlikeliness of it happening. After all, AI is something many are voicing real concerns about nowadays; nobody ever wanted to reanimate the dead.

But it's the weight of being the creator that weighs heaviest; "not the history of man, [the] history of gods," Caleb says in Ex Machina. Victor Frankenstein created Adam in the stereotypical mad scientist fashion, not thinking of the consequences. He couldn't take the weight and decided to flee, hoping his creation would just... disappear, I guess. He didn't really think anything through. Nathan had to contain it, because he knew the potential danger of his creation, and while he's probably madder a scientist than Frankenstein was, he's more paranoid of the unknowns. He had history behind him. He had Frankenstein.

These two stories are very important fables for today. There are still unknowns in the world of science, and maybe Ex Machina will help people step back and look at the wider issues associated with AI. I know it'll be there whenever I read a cautionary article in the future.

Sharknado and bad movie culture

I am not the most well-versed bad movie watcher: I haven’t seen Troll 2, Birdemic, or A Talking Cat!?, and my friends and I don’t gather to watch bad movies and joke out a running commentary a la Mystery Science Theatre 3000. But I have seen a number of MST3K episodes, and, more importantly, I do listen to a ton of bad movie podcasts. These podcasts, and the communities that have sprung up around them, show how bad movie watching has become a cultural phenomenon. It’s small, but, given the schedule of SyFy, it’s proven to be powerful.

But Syfy is doing its best to ruin this phenomenon.

Bad movie podcasts are a dime a dozen these days – The Flop House, How Did This Get Made?, and We Hate Movies are some of the more notable examples, but just look through iTunes and you’ll have a plethora of commentary on garbage cinema. What all these podcasts try and do is find the gold within this garbage, movies that are not terrible to sit through because they are enjoyable in their awfulness. A movie like The Room is one such example of gold: a straight-faced attempt to make a film that fails on every level, and whose failures are fun to watch and laugh at.

The Room’s creator, Tommy Wiseau, thinks he’s a great filmmaker; every convention appearance and statement he's made only reinforces his self-delusion. Though it sounds mean-spirited, this is what makes for a great bad movie – a sincere attempt at hitting all the bases of a successful movie, and tripping over every base even when the ump has called the hitter out. The Room is described as a “romantic drama”, but from the way people talk about it, it’s one of the great comedies of the 21^st century.

Syfy’s Sharknado series is the anti-Room. It is a bald-faced attempt to cash in on what makes The Room and its ilk likeable, to try and manufacture its own cult status. It knows what it’s doing and that what it's doing is stupid, and this is a cardinal sin of bad movie watching. For a film to be self-aware sucks the fun out of trying to find something to laugh at, like it’s elbowing the audience in the ribs the entire time, until the viewers’ ribs are thoroughly bruised.

But what’s worse is that it’s a manufactured part of a genuine, grassroots cultural phenomenon. Sharknado is making bad movies for the uninitiated, not for those who’ve waded through the piles and piles of garbage to find a laugh. When you listen to a podcast like The Flop House, which rates movies as Good-Bad, Bad-Bad, or A Movie You Kind Of Liked, more often than not you will get a bad-bad rating. It takes time and energy to find something that will end up being entertaining. Sy-Fy takes all the guesswork out by telling you their intentions through a stupid premise, D-list cameos, and tongue-in-cheek voice-overs. The only intent is to make something “bad”, and in this way they fail.

They made something that is just bad.