Fifty Shades of Red

Normally I would be spending this day relaxing and playing video games, but since my laptop is giving me problems I've been spending my day trying to get it to work so I could get some highly anticipated reviews uploaded on time (and there's one in particular I know you ladies are waiting for).  So I figured I'd try to keep you all entertained while I get those technical difficulties out of the way and share this story of box office ticket buying.  Yes, even at critics screenings, you still need to go to the box office and ask for the ticket.  Remember how in the last blog post I mentioned that critics largely don't look forward to seeing anything because there's always something to see?  Well, the same can't be said for us having movies we don't want to see, as there are PLENTY of those movies out there!

While I personally go into every movie hoping I will enjoy it, there are some movies that feel awful before the movie even starts.  Last week that movie for me was "Fifty Shades of Grey," a movie I wasn't going to rule out enjoying, but knew that the likelihood of enjoying it wasn't very high.  Whether I did enjoy it or not I'll leave for you to read in my full review, because the story here is actually going to see it.  See, this is a movie whose subject matter is so popular that you can't avoid it.  Everyone knows the book became popular because of the perverted sex scenes in the book.  In fact, you could argue it was the first mainstream pornographic novel to really hit it big with a mainstream audience.  I believe the reason the book has sold more eBooks than it has paperback books because of this stigma.

Few people like to go to the park, reading a book people know is full of perverted material, and just being judged by random strangers.  No, better to be reading it on an iPad or Kindle, where the content on what you could be reading is really up to the outside observers imagination.  With a movie you can't do that.  I was in the position of having to walk to the box office, tell this poor girl who is so cute I might want to ask her out for a cup of coffee for a ticket to see what is essentially known as smut, for a ticket to "Fifty Shades of Grey." Because this is a critics screening I can't use the kiosk to pick up my ticket either.  I might have been willing to but a ticket to another movie and sneak in to this one, finding that paying money for anonymity would be well worth the $10 at this point.

Ah, but the screening was in IMAX, which has it's own whole theater side to itself, so there will be no sneaking into anything.  I sized up my options and how I could possibly get this ticket and see this movie without looking like a total pervert.  Alright, so I COULD explain that I'm a critic, it's my job, and that she probably doesn't get assigned the most ideal tasks in her line of work either, but that would take way too long and I would still come off looking like a goon!  Then, I got an idea.  I swallowed my pride, walked up confidently, and said the following line:

"One ticket for the perverted movie playing on your IMAX screen, please."

The line worked.  The girl laughed, mentioned that it was a special screening, and asked for identification so she could authorize I was supposed to be there.  She then gave me the spiel about how I couldn't take any pictures of the movie with my smartphone.  And that, potential future film critics, is how you deal with having to see a movie you don't want to.  I wish I could say this information will never need to be used, but I have a feeling we'll be getting sequels for this.

"What Movies Are You Looking Forward To?"

"What Movies Are You Looking Forward To?"

I feel like I should address this question because I get it all the time.  Granted, this is probably to be expected.  After all, when you watch films for a living people want to know what they should see.  Here's the thing: I don't really look forward to watching any movie.  At least, I don't lie awake at night counting down the days to when a particular movie is coming out.  It just doesn't happen.  When you are a film critic you are seeing several movies a week sometimes.  I've mentioned this before, but I mention it again because this makes it almost impossible to anticipate the release of anything.  Seriously, it is.  Every week I'm watching action movies, dramas, stuff for kids that I doubt kids themselves would actually watch, but there I am watching it and taking notes to write a review no child is ever going to read.

When it comes to anticipating movies critics tend to run by a different set of criteria.  We are not swayed much with franchises, sequels are more of a bane to us because we feel like we are writing the same review sometimes, and we try not o watch previews because marketing campaigns don't sway us.  Personally, I tend to get excited about a film if it's being directed by a director I am a fan of.  Disney and Pixar animated films tend to be events for me, so those I admit to looking forward to.  And I'm sure the closer we get to the release of the new Star Wars movie the more I will get excited despite being disappointed in two of the last four movies we got (yes folks, I am counting the Clone Wars animated movie).  Otherwise, no, I'm not looking forward to seeing a whole lot.  This is a job, and there's always work to do without looking forward to doing more.

While I'm at it, let's tackle the other question that I consider to be the sister question to the one listed above: What's coming out that's good?  For the most part this is a bad question and I'll tell you why.  The reason this is a bad question is because unless I've seen the movie I can't tell you.  This is another reason critics don't like previews: They can convince you that you are getting a better product than you actually are.  In fact, I'm going to stop here because I think previews deserves it's own post, so we'll tackle that in a week or two.

Depressed Writing

Film critics, like everyone else, have problems just like everyone else.  We rarely discuss them in our movie reviews, but there is no doubt that they affect our writing.  My problem is a major one that makes the daily tasks of doing this job unbearable sometimes: Depression.  This is a topic that many would say should not be written about in public, that it should be saved for a therapist or diary, but I'm going to discuss it now because I feel like I must.  I also want to discuss it because I'm feeling a little down right now and I'm hoping writing such a post will help sooth some nerves, but that is another topic altogether.  The bottom line is I suffer from depression and have for many years at this point.

Like allergies it's something you can learn to live with, but when it hits it hits hard, and it's not the least bit of fun.  It makes it hard to focus when you are watching a movie.  It makes watching the new SpongeBob Squarepants movie way more annoying than you might otherwise find it.  It's hard to put words to paper.  If you take notes I can promise you there won't be any at screenings where these feelings are overcoming you.  Heck, leaving the house just to go to work becomes such a monumental task that you sometimes find yourself blowing off work so you can stay in bed and pull the covers over your head.

And there's absolutely nothing you can do about this.

Yeah, sure, you can take medication (and I do), but clinical depression never goes away.  The medication only lasts so long before your body gets used to it and you need to have it tweaked.  All the while you will have a couple weeks before you find out if the tweaking of the meds actually does anything or has side effects that impose on your life for the worse.  While you fix this you still have to go to that stupid screening of "Fifty Shades of Grey" and actually pay close attention to it, collect your thoughts, and write a review.  Worse, sometimes depression can hit when you are watching "The Amazing Spider-Man 2," and it's hard to trust if the action sequences are just boring or if you personally are just unable to get into them.

There aren't too many movies about real depression that I see every year.  The reason is because depression is bleak, leaves the person unmotivated and in many cases broken without much to look at.  Movies about depression tend to make the depressed character emotionally unstable rather than a lifeless noodle.  Sure, that looks more like bi-polar disorder than depression, but it's more interesting to watch for the audience.  The best example of both these worlds (which also revolves around a writer, ironically enough) is "The Hours," where the depressed characters truly seem to just be going from situation to situation without much excitement or motivation in their lives.  While still motivated enough to keep things moving, rarely has a movie captured the pure lethargies depression brings to the table.

So what does the depressed film critic do?  Mostly, he just keeps writing.  It takes so much effort to write any little thing, but he tries to write.  Even if he has to write about the very thing that is making his life miserable.  That is why I'm writing this post now.  I am so depressed it hurts.  Thinking is hard.  Energy is low.  The last couple of movies I've gone to have almost been like blurs to me.  All the while the homepage of my website lists "American Sniper" as the latest review even though that movie opened three weeks ago.  Heck, I still need to do my voice actor Oscar's feature I do every year and who knows how long THAT will take?!

There was a spark though when I realized that I hadn't updated this blog in months.  This was a perfect topic for it.  So I sat down to type it.  It will not be proof read or "fixed" with a second and third draft like most of my writings.  To do so would guarantee that it never saw the light of day, and I can't even begin to hope to start crawling out of this hole unless something - anything - goes up.  If there is a point to this it's that depression attacks people regardless what they do.  Even people with relatively fun jobs like watching movies are not immune to it.  That doesn't make you a bad person it makes you a sick person.  So get help.  Write about it if you have to.  Don't let it beat you though.  That's what I'm going to spend the next few days doing: Fighting back and not letting it beat me.  Part of that fight will include continuing to write, even if the articles are as bad as this one I will write because that's the very thing my depression doesn't want me to do.

Well, though, because this depressed critic is going to keep writing anyway.

Dr. Movie Critic

 

In some ways film critics are online therapists that aren't paid very well and whose opinion should not be taken as a real diagnosis.  Our job consists of watching movies, writing down our thoughts about them, and then posting them to the world so that a bunch of teens on Twitter can tell you how much you suck at your position (if we were truly good at our job we'd probably find a way to keep our reviews to 140 characters).  Analyzing the filming techniques, editing, music, and subtleties of acting all certainly are factors in the reviews we write.  The biggest part of our reviews happen to be our life stories though.  Since reviews are opinions we have no choice but to put ourselves into the reviews.  Why we relate (or don't relate) to a film has a lot to do with our life experiences and how we bring them to the film.

How a movie touches us and makes us relate to someone we might not normally relate to are all tied into our life experiences.  It's sometimes easy to be writing a review and realize more than halfway into it that you are actually writing about your beloved dog and how much he meant to you during your childhood until your parents had to bring him to the vet to have him put down because it was the "kind thing" to do.  Or you are writing a review for "The Social Network" and you soon realize you have just spent a majority of the time writing about how lonely you were as a child.  If you're not careful, your reviews can stop being reviews and turn into journal entries.  Heck, take it too far and you might as well just open a LiveJournal account.  However these are the personal stories that can make for the most successful reviews.
Like movies themselves it doesn't really matter how "right" you get the specifics of the review down if your readers don't emphasize with it.  Readers are going to see a movie because they want to have an emotional experience of some sort.  It doesn't really matter what experience they are looking for in particular, but they are looking for one.  If our reviews don't reflect our life experience onto the film than the review may as well be useless.  Both "Gone Girl" and "The Maze Runner" are movies that are soundly made, but just because both movies function doesn't mean they are worth watching.  If you can't emote in your writing to a certain extent this is not a job you will be good at.  If you have more Twitter and Tumbler followers than you have website readers than you might be better at blurbs than you are of well thought out critiques.

Critic on Vacation

Regardless what profession you are in you need a vacation from work.  This includes film critics.  For those of you who wonder what someone who watches movies for a living could possibly need a vacation for a invite you to read any number of posts in this blog and have a new understanding of a "dream job."  I am on vacation now but one of the problems with being on vacation is that when articles don't get written there is less traffic to my site, thus there is less money, thus...well, nothing really I just like having money.  So I figured I would take a moment to share some of the things I've been doing on vacation to at least get some eyeballs onto my site:

• I have been spending time with family and pets.  These are the people in your life who have likely raised you and animals that serve no practical function in your life but make you feel loved none-the-less.  This is the thing people of any job should spend more time doing, but that is an article for another time.
• Another thing I like to do on vacation is watch TV.  Since TV is another medium altogether it's easy to watch it and relax.  Thankfully FXX is currently airing a marathon for "The Simpsons" where they air every episode (plus the movie) on TV within twelve days.  Funny show, it's always on, and there's no need to write about it since hardcore fans of the show come up with much better theories then I ever could.
• I also read.  Both novels and comics.  The novel I am currently reading is "Catch-22" (which means I'll likely have to watch the film for work when vacation is over) and I'm rereading "Dragon Ball" (of which I won't be revisiting the show anytime soon since that series clocks in well over 500 episodes).
• Watch more of "The Simpsons" marathon.

The biggest thing I critic needs to do when he's on vacation is to watch movies and not write about them.  Watch them and not look at them like they are work.  Try to enjoy them.  Remind yourself why you love movies in the first place and deprive yourself of the actual work so that when it is time to return to the job it can be a little exciting again.  So critics do take vacations and these are at least a few of things I recommend critics do with their time.  If you happen to love sports then do whatever it is people who like sports do on vacation.  Well, there's my article to get a few of you reading this blog while I'm on vacation.  Now if you'll excuse me, they're airing the 300th episode of "The Simpsons" now!

Can a Critic Be Too Political?

If you read movie commentary of any kind chances are you read Awards Daily.  Run by Oscar guru Sasha Stone, Awards Daily (formerly Oscar Watch) is far and above the biggest Oscar commentary site on the internet.  It was one of the first blogs to seriously comment on the Academy Awards race, getting so big that opinions from the site have been rumored to sway the race in certain directions (many Academy voters read the site).  I don’t read Awards Daily anymore.  Whenever I make the occasional return to the site I’m reminded why.  It’s not because the articles are poorly written or trite (because they certainly aren’t).  It’s not that I consider her (and co-editor Ryan Adams) to ruin movies by their overanalyzing of films (can you truly overanalyze a film).  No, I don’t read Awards Daily anymore for one reason: Too much politics in their writing.  This also happens to be the subject this blog post is about.

Yes, I’m going to use Awards Daily as a punching bag here, but what I want to discuss is politics in reviews and blogging.  For the most part if you run a personal blog or website you are pretty much free to write whatever you want.  Though you may have gotten into this business to write about your lifelong passion you – like everyone else – have to return to the real world at the end of the day.  If you primarily write online (and really, who doesn’t these days) chances are you use Twitter, Facebook, and all those other social media apps.  It’s pretty easy for the world to intrude.  You’re sitting there writing your review of “Captain America: Winter Soldier” when a news article pops up on Twitter to remind you that women feel like their rights to choose are being taken away by the Hobby Lobby case.  You go back to your review and realize that for how many years we’ve gotten superhero movies we have yet to get one starring a woman (no Wonder Woman or Sailor Moon).

It’s little things like this I notice in my daily routine that can sort of sour the mood on what I’m writing about sometimes.  Do this long enough and soon you’ll want to use your voice for more than just talking about movies; you’ll want to write about movies with purpose.  This I understand because I, in many ways, watch movies to help understand the world and people better.  Some movies are more important than others and I feel the urge to say something I feel is “important.”  Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t.  When talking about documentaries it’s hard to keep politics out of the discussion.  So yes, I understand the dilemma critics and bloggers face when there comes a time or two where you want to shout to the world what you feel is a great injustice in your eyes.

Whether it be Obama, Bush, healthcare, religion, or whatever you want it to be, once in a while you will say something about your personal beliefs that will rub someone the wrong way.  So the problem isn’t that you are going to say something at one point the question is how MUCH will you say?!  This is where things get to be a lot murkier.  This is also where we return to Awards Daily.  Sasha Stone pays for Awards Daily and thus has every right to say what she wants to say.  So in 2009 she is all for Kathryn Bigelow winning Best Director because a woman has never won before.  When “Django Unchained” wins Best Original Screenplay and Best Support Actor she’s online the next day complaining to Hollywood that only white people from the film won awards while the black people didn’t (were any of them worthy of awards in the first place?).

She always makes sure to mention that the Academy voting membership is mostly white, old men (to her credit there ARE stats to back this up, but why bring it up every other day).  She’s extremely anti-religious.  The last big thing was she wanted to see was Steve McQueen winning Best Director and Picture for “12 Years a Slave.”  Because it was her favorite film of the year, right?  Nope, she wanted him to win because it was time for the Academy to start making up for their mistreatment of black people by giving him these awards (her favorite film that year was “The Wolf of Wall Street”).

If you disagree with her on any of this in the comments she will block you on the site.  If her co-editor Ryan gets to you first he will do no less than make you feel like a bully because you have the nerve to actually DISAGREE with her!  Again, this is her site and she has every right to do this.  For me I should mention my site gets enough readers (and now YouTube viewers) that if I were to start getting political I could probably stand to lose a few readers and the results wouldn’t be felt very much.  I try not to do that though because what would that prove?  Would I gain converts?  Not likely, most people reading my site are looking for movie opinions not what I think about how Obama is handling nuclear talks with Iran…maybe if there is a documentary on the subject I can talk about that, but otherwise my readers don’t care.

I doubt many of the people who go to Awards Daily cares to get the daily dose of anti-Republican, anti-religious, militant feminist views they get.  Chances are they just want to know things like whether or not Steve Carell will get an Oscar nomination for “Foxcatcher” (Note: I can’t confirm or deny anything, but…yeah, I’d place money on that happening this year if I were you).  For me being political on your site is not about being right or wrong, it’s about respecting your readers.  You have an audience of various people from different religions, political parties, and age groups.  You most likely have Brony’s reading your site as well.  I feel that film critics should bring people together to help better understand and love film, not antagonize them because they don’t support birth control or don’t believe in that “big sky bully.”

If you want to be a film critic or blogger I feel you must use these talents to do good with them.  Write good reviews, engage is positive discussions, and use the films you watch to expand your mind.  Don’t use your site as a political soapbox.  Awards Daily does this but I think what people feel above all else when they visit sites like that (whether they agree with the author or not) is disrespected.  Most of the posts on that site are meant to make people feel bad about themselves.  If this is what you want to do then I can’t stop you.  Obviously there’s a market for it.  If there wasn’t chances are Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore wouldn’t be making money doing what they are doing.  For me though I think you are using your gifts to do more harm than good.

If you want a more streamlined example I suppose you can just think of what you feel when your Facebook friends flood your news feed with their political rants…hmm, I think I might have saved myself a few paragraphs if I had used that example instead. -_-;

How to Pick and Sort Movies

Just a little sample of how I database things.

Sometimes to keep myself entertained I play games in how I watch my movies for the day.  Granted, how good the day is largely rests on what movies I see, but on the days I don't have a screener to go to I have to rely on stuff at home.  Just to make things a little more interesting I sometimes put restrictions on what I can watch.  Today I wanted to make sure I watched a couple of Oscar nominated movies for my book (regardless how many nominations they got).  I was in the mood for something exciting so I limited my choices to action and thriller.  I also didn't want to watch something that was dumb, but sometimes that is out of my control.  What I do then is I usually browse the high rated movies on IMDB to see what people like and what they don't.  This is no garuentee that you'll stumble upon (these people listed "Fight Club" as one of the top ten best movies of all time...not a bad film, but top ten of all TIME?!).

Once I get some ideas the first thing to do is to check and see if I have it on DVD or BluRay.  Film critics tend to buy a lot of movies for review purposes that end up being tax write off's, so it's not unusual for us to sometimes have dozens of films on disk that we've never actually seen (sometimes not even opened).  I don't know how most critics sort their movie collection, but I keep certain types of films together in order of the year they were released: Best Picture Winners, Disney, Pixar, BluRay 3D, etc...you get the picture.  The most maddening group is the Criterion Collection, which I sort based on the number on the spine.  The rest I sort alphabetically.  This sort of sorting (ho ho) alone is not enough on it's own though.  The second thing I do is keep a database on my movies.

The information covers title, year, director, stars, rating, and format (typical for most people who keep movie databases).  I add a couple more options though that most people don't include: Criterion and Oscar.  If a movie has won Best Picture, Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary, or best film anything at the Academy Awards I put an X in the the 'Oscar' column.  That lets me know to look for the movie on my Oscar shelf instead of on the shelves of regular movies.  If a movie is a Criterion film I put the number in the Criterion column.  I didn't use to do this, but as my collection grew I found finding the Criterion movies extremely frustrating.  Unless the database indicated it was a Criterion title I could be looking for it for hours.  If I didn't number it the result would be the same.

You have to think about these things if you plan to have a big movie collection.  If you have a movie collection of at least thirty titles I think making a database is something to consider.  You might not get it very high, but it's always good to get started early so that this is a much easier project.  I started my first database when I was 12 years old and my family had over 400 VHS tapes.  It took almost a whole week to database those movies and I wish I had started sooner.  Having a database is essential for any movie fan unless you plan to buy all your movies on UltraViolet where they will be on the cloud and neatly sorted for you already.  For the record, both movies I ended up watching where good movies, I had one of them on DVD, and ironically they were directed by Michael Bay and Tony Scott, two directors I typically don't like.

Yep, some days are more interesting than others.