A Piece of the Action: Point Break

A few years ago, when The Bourne Ultimatum had come out, I was talking about the film with my then boss. I was going off about my admiration for the filmmaking, how it struck me as a rare example of someone crafting a fact-cut, shaky-cam action scene that was actually coherent and exciting, how the action scenes successfully juggled simultaneous narrative strands, how they worked in a few incredible shots (especially that shot where Bourne jumps out that window in Tangier, and the camera follows right behind). My boss politely smiled through my monologue, and then said:

"Yeah. I liked the part where he hit that guy with a book."

Well, shucks, I liked that part, too. But are clever ideas the only things that make an action scene good or bad? Obviously a big part of the appeal of action films is the appreciation of a well choreographed fight, or a cool explosion, or a creative kill. Is it only the content of an action scene that matters, or is there an art to an action scene? Part of what I'm trying to do with this series of posts is not just admire the literal events of an action sequence (i.e. guy smacks other guy with a large book), but to admire the craft or form of it (i.e. how that book-smack is filmed and edited) and what its effect is on the viewer.

Last time, we looked a brief sequence (about 20 seconds) from Inglourious Basterds, where I tried to show how Tarantino mixed rapid-fire editing with clear visual storytelling to create an action sequence that felt chaotic but maintained coherency. This time, I thought I'd break down a great action sequence that took the opposite, or at least a very different, tack: a section of the foot chase from Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break. This sequence mixes handheld, less precise shots (lots of blurry motion and subjects going in and out of focus) with a relatively normal, steady editing pace (for an action scene, that is; the average shot length is something closer to 3 seconds, nearly an eternity in modern action movie grammar). The final effect is a scene of headlong energy; you're practically out of breath by the end of it.

Sadly, these days Point Break is mainly viewed as something of a work of camp or kitsch, I suspect because people don't like Keanu Reeves and think its funny the way he delivers lines like "I am an F-B-I AGENT!" I consider it to be a rare action movie that respects and fleshes out its characters, and takes itself seriously even if elements of the story are completely ludicrous. I'm not ashamed to say it's one of my all-time favorite action movies, and a serious contender for #1. However, whether you see it as a corny novelty or not, I think the one thing everyone agrees on is that its action scenes legitimately kick ass. So even if you can't stop chortling at the idea of bank-robbing surfers, you can at least see the value in analyzing the craft behind a sequence where no one does much talking any way.

For those who haven't seen it (and really, if you like action movies, this has a handful of all-time classic action scenes, so you should put this one on your queue), Point Break stars Keanu Reeves as Johnny Utah, an FBI agent who goes undercover as a surfer to catch a gang of bank robbers lead by Bodhi (Patrick Swayze). Utah unfortunately makes the mistake of befriending the wise, seemingly benevolent Bodhi before realizing that Bodhi is the man he's trying to catch. Utah finds himself having a crisis of conscience when he realizes he has to take Bodhi down. (The first Fast and the Furious movie more or less copied the entire plot, but replaced the surfing and skydiving scenes with drag racing.)

The scene we're looking at today is just a segment of the extended chase sequence from the middle of the film, as Utah chases Bodhi through a residential neighborhood and right through the houses (the sequence as a whole also includes involves a bank robbery, shootouts, a car chase, and a gas pump being turned into a makeshift flamethrower; seriously, you need to see this movie if you haven't). Bodhi's face is hidden under a Ronald Reagan mask, so sadly we won't be able to marvel at the late, great Swayze's gorgeous visage as we pour over these stills.

(Note: at the suggestion of Fred Topel, an actual professional journalist who kindly slummed the comments section on the last post, I'm going to try keeping the descriptions brief and save the analysis for afterward. Which, considering how many stills I have this time, is probably for the best.)

Shot 1: Bodhi darts between two houses, down the street, and up to the back gate of another house.
Shot 2: Bodhi breaks down the back gate and runs into the yard, brushing past a swing set.


Shot 3: A near imperceptible cut to a lower angle on Bodhi's feet. He runs right through a kiddie pool, and hops over a little fence into the front yard.


Shot 4: Utah hurtles down the street and into the backyard Bodhi has just left.



Shot 5: Bodhi runs through the front yard, knocking over a pedestrian watering the lawn. He hops over the front fence and runs over a car hood and out into the street.


Shot 6: Back to Utah, who leaps over the pedestrian as he passes through the yard.



Shot 7: Possibly a continuation of shot 5, we follow Bodhi into the street. He jigs right, and a child on a bike passes through the foreground. Bodhi runs to the cross street, right at an oncoming truck...

Shot 8: Quick cut to Bodhi squeezing by just in time.

Shot 9: Utah bolts into the street, narrowly avoids the cyclists, and smacks into a pedestrian (garbageman?) by the garbage truck.


Shot 10: The pedestrian falls over, but Utah continues on.

Shots 11-13: Bodhi in a tight shot, running down the next street. Cut back to a similar shot of Utah, and then back to Bodhi again.

Shot 14: Bodhi cuts into a random yard, up the front porch and to the front door.

Shot 15: Bodhi charges into the house.

Shot 16: From Bodhi's POV, charging directly towards a woman holding a stack of laundry, the pile of clothes flying right into the camera.

Shot 17: Cut back to a wider angle, approximately where the camera passed through in the previous shot. The effect is almost that of the laundry passing through the camera.

Shot 18: Utah runs in from outside, the camera pans as he rushes past...

Shot 19: And leaps over the woman with the laundry.



Shot 20: With the camera in pursuit, Bodhi runs through the back porch, out into the street, and quickly scales a neighbor's wall.


Shot 21: Cut back to Utah exiting the backyard and similarly scaling the wall.





Shot 22: In this sequence's most elaborate shot, Bodhi hotfoots it down some alleyways, onto a porch, through a sliding glass door. The camera pulls in to show him locking the door, then whip pans back to Utah, running onto the porch, snatching up a flower pot, and hurling it at the window.




Shot 23: Cut to inside the home as the window explodes. Utah dives in, collides with a table and slams into a ground. The startled woman in the house begins hitting him with her vacuum.

Shot 24 - 25: Two quick shots: the woman hitting Utah, and Utah brushing it off and getting to his feet.


Shot 26: Utah runs outside, and the camera pans right...

Shot 27: Holy shit! Bodhi throws a fucking dog at him.

Shot 28: Close-up of Utah wrestling with the dog.



Shot 29: Utah kicks the dog away, and the camera follows him as he runs out of the yard and out into the street.


Obviously there are lots of reasons that this is a great chase scene, in terms of the content. You have the nimble footwork, the near-miss with the truck, the constant collisions with innocent bystanders, Keanu being beat with a vacuum cleaner, Swayze throwing a dog, etc. But let's take a quick look at the form to understand how the style really makes the chase pop.

The key here, I think, is the way Bigelow uses dynamic, handheld camera work for energy, without sacrificing visual coherency. In many shots, the camera almost appears to be running behind the characters; participating in the chase. It darts up and down alleyways, follows the characters into yards and houses, peaks over fences, and whip pans back and forth to stay with the action.

You can see how this could easily go wrong: a lesser filmmaker with a less-talented crew might end with up an ugly, confusing series of blurry, practically abstract shots, bearing more resemblance to a Stan Brakhage short than an action scene. What Bigelow does, though, is avoid using too many close-ups. She keeps the camera held back a bit, so even when the shots are unsteady, blurry and/or not particularly in focus, the "story" of each shot is obvious, including: the character/subject, the action being performed, and its relation to the geography of the scene. When Bigelow does go to close-up, like with the dog toss, there's a good reason; in that case, to emphasize the surprise and add a visceral sense of impact.

Speaking of geography, its maintained very well during the scene, even though the characters are never in one location for long. A scene like this could be tedious if it was just a matter of watching one character run through a stretch of land, followed by the other character doing the same. In some cases Bigelow uses similar shots of locations, for example Bodhi entering the house in shot 15 and Utah entering in shot 18, to orient the audience (to make it clear they both entered the same door). But she's clever about including ellipses here and there so it's not too repetitive: i.e. we see Utah enter the backyard in shot 4 and run through the front in shot 6, but we don't see the entire journey through the back yard nor his jump over the fence (and we don't need to.)

The fast-but not-too-fast cutting of the scene helps in a few ways. Most importantly might be that we're allowed to see the characters complete whole actions. It's been noted by many (for instance, this great blog post on action scenes by David Bordwell, and Roger Ebert's review of From Paris With Love) that fast editing and tight framing can hide the specifics of motion in a scene; punches don't connect, characters seem to start an action in one shot but have already completed it by the next, etc. Here Bigelow is careful not to cut until an significant action is complete, as in the wall scaling in shots 20 & 21.

When she does cut on an action, there's usually a solid match on the next shot. The best example is probably between shots 22 & 23, where Utah throws the pot at the window, followed by a shot of the window breaking and Utah charging through. The transition is seamless, as we clearly see the action from beginning to end.

The other benefit is that there's a real sense that all of this is actually happening to the characters. Obviously, it could be anyone under that Reagan mask, but it really does appear to be Keanu Reeves in all those shots; if they used a lot of stunt men for this scene, it's hard to spot. (The dim lighting during the window break/table dive is clever, I suspect they are hiding a stunt double's face). Other movies cut so fast, even if it is the actor doing the stunt, it hardly matters because the audience could never tell anyway. In this scene, it actually looks like Keanu is doing all the things his character is supposed to be doing.

There's also some smooth, nearly invisible cuts during the scene that help keep the flow going. The cut from Bodhi entering the yard in shot 1 to his legs in shot 2 matches so well you could be forgiven for thinking they are the same shot. Ditto the dog throw.

This is a less than 2 minute segment from a much longer chase scene, and already you can see how many complex elements went into making just this little snippet. Hopefully, I've managed to illustrate with these frames how a skillful combination of kinetic camerawork/editing with a clarity of motion and spacial relations helped to make a classic chase scene.

A Piece of the Action: Inglourious Basterds

Hello to all you web-browsing individuals out there in internetland. This past weekend, my very close friend Patrick came to visit Shenan and me, traveling all the way from the mythic land of Chicago. During our long weekend of hangouts, drunken revelry, and all-around debauchery, Patrick and I discussed our mutual affection for Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, which we agreed was one of the best films of 2009. Our conversation inevitably turned towards what I consider the film's high point: the lengthy sequence set in a French bar that begins a little over an hour into the film. Patrick told me that he once went through the scene's climactic shootout frame-by-frame and was seriously impressed but just how well-constructed it was. I decided to put his claim to the test, and we popped on my copy of the film and slowly went through the sequence.

Sure enough, Patrick was right. The shootout is a mini-masterpiece of action filmmaking, a carefully constructed piece of work that is rapidly edited to create energy, while adhering to some basic visual storytelling principles in order to maintain the scene's coherency.

It got me thinking: going through this sequence shot-by-shot might make for a great blog post. I believe that action films are underrated as art. I have long maintained that action movies, beyond their function as entertainment, can be considered "art" if they display brilliant visual storytelling. An action movie may lack a deeper meaning, in the emotional or socio-political sense (although it can have these layers), but a great action scene can provide a powerful study of motion, as well as create a palpable sense of energy and inspire a strong emotional reaction in the audience (namely, excitement). I feel these attributes warrant serious analysis, so here we are: the first (and possibly only, if I'm not satisfied with the final result) installment of "A Piece of the Action," where I will break down an action scene shot-by-shot to try to briefly explain why I think it works.

Now, rather than tediously recount the plot of Inglourious Basterds here, I'm going to assume that everyone reading this has seen the movie. If not, I will pause right now so that you can go out, pick up a copy, and give it a spin. I bet you'll love it.

Okay, all set? Pretty great, huh? I knew you'd love it. Unless you're Jonathan Rosenbaum, in which case I'm sorry this movie offended you so deeply and I respect your opinion although I do not share it, and I also I really loved your piece on Joe Dante's Matinee, a movie that's begging to be rediscovered by a generation of movie-lovers.

Right, now, time to discuss the sequence at hand. The 23 shots I have decided to discuss here today, by my count, last about 22 seconds. Granted, I'm not a big fan of math, but I think we can agree that that means it has an average shot length of slightly less than 1 second, which I would consider fast cutting. One of the most prevalent criticisms of modern action scenes is that they are edited so fast that they become incoherent, but Tarantino avoids confusion in this sequence, as I will argue, by respecting things like shot composition, continuity, and geography/spacial relations (also, it doesn't hurt that he isn't shaking the camera around too much).

Before I start, I want to freely admit that I am not an expert at visual analysis, and haven't really done anything like it since college. I tend to forget a lot of technical terms. So if this post comes off as embarrassingly unprofessional, it's because I'm not a professional. Also, I probably should have included a few screen grabs from before the action begins, in order to give you, the reader, a sense of the characters and geography of the scene. But I only have so much patience for clicking through a movie frame-by-frame, so I only took shots from the shoot-out. Sorry. Let's begin:

(Note: you can click on the frames to get a slightly better look at them.)

Shot 1: Unbelievable badass Hugo Stiglitz busts a cap into that smug Nazi asshole Major Hellstrom's groinal region. Please note the other Nazis behind Stiglitz and Hellstrom, still playing Indian Poker, as they will soon be participating in the action. Also note Hellstrom's awesome beer glass to the right (you can't tell from this shot, but it's shaped like a boot, and I own a very similar one myself). And please appreciate the fact that I very carefully included a nice splash of blood in this still, for your viewing pleasure.

Shot 2: It had been established earlier in the scene that the characters were all holding guns on each other under the table, and we are now getting the payoff. The camera cuts to underneath the table, where we see Hellstrom getting filled with lead. Pretty simple cause-and-effect here. He opens fire under the table, towards Archie Hicox and Bridget von Hammersmark.

Shot 3: From left to right, we see: von Hammersmarks's leg, Hicox firing under the table at Hellstrom, Hellstrom firing at Hicox, and Stiglitz firing into Hellstrom's lap. The audience quickly grasps, if the preceding dialogue didn't already underscore it enough for them, that everyone at this table is fucked. I like the misty sprays of blood, which effectively mix with the gun smoke to create a smoky/hazy effect throughout much of the shootout.

Shot 4: (Split into two frames to give a slightly better sense of the action). We cut now to a closer shot of just Hicox and von Hammersmark's legs. Hicox takes multiple hits, and von Hammersmark is hit in the leg by a stray shot, and both topple to the floor. The male heroes are all dressed as Nazis during this scene, so there is serous potential for confusion as to who is who during all the ruckus. Tarantino, however, does a good job of making it clear that these are Hicox's legs in this shot by also including von Hammersmark's on the left side of the frame, using the previously established geography to orient the audience.

Shot 5: The underneath-the-table action now completed, we return to eye-level. One of the surviving Basterds gets up, draws his gun, and opens fire. We don't see what he's shooting at yet. (According to IMDB he's named Wicki, but I'm not sure they say his name in the film; he does little more than sit in the background throughout the preceding events, but kicks a lot of ass during these brief 22 seconds)

Shot 6: Cut to a shot farther back, so we can see that Wicki is opening fire on the other table full of Nazis, taking one of them down. Keeping Wicki in the shot instead of just cutting to a cause-and-effect close-up of the Nazi getting filled up with holes helps maintain the integrity of the geography. On the left side of the frame we can see part of the waitress' arm and her cards (she was also visible in shot 1 between Stiglitz and Hellstrom), essentially in the same position as before. Towards the end of the shot, she begins to rise. A shot hits the table in front of Wicki.

Shot 7: Tarantino now brings us back to Stiglitz who, much to our delight, is viciously stabbing Hellstrom (who is probably already dead from all the gunshots) in the back of his head. Behind Stiglitz, visible under his arm, the waitress rises and opens fire on him. She is completing the action that she began in the previous shot, so there is a nice logical, visual connection between the two shots. Her motion in the background here is also the set-up for the next shot. On the lower left, one of the other Nazis appears to be fumbling, trying to find his gun. To the right, that boot-shaped beer glass I love so much makes another appearance, now appearing to be speckled with blood.

Shot 8: (split into 2 screen grabs). We go to a tighter shot to the waitress, from a slight right angle this time, as she blasts the shit out of Stiglitz. Very briefly, we can see the Nazi from the previous shot is still fumbling for his weapon, totally getting one-upped by a girl. The camera intensely zooms into a closeup, a visual motif that will turn up again in the shootout.

Shot 9: We cut about 180 degrees back to Stiglitz, from the waitress' POV, getting hit in the back by the her gunfire. The last 3 shots form a clear, concise bit of action: the waitress rising behind Stliglitz, a closeup of her shooting, and a reverse shot of Stiglitz getting hit.

Off camera, he has apparently picked up Hellstrom's boot-shaped beer glass (I have to hope that he was planning on beating Hellstrom's corpse with it, or perhaps sticking it up the Nazi's ass). As he is hit, he flails and drops the glass on the table. I like that the glass, a memorable prop during the extended suspense sequence leading up to the shootout, is briefly involved in the action. On the right side of the frame is the other waitress, who looks mighty young to me, fulfilling the role of innocent bystander. This shot helps establish where she is standing, important for a shot later in the sequence.

Shot 10: This cut here is a little more abrupt. One of the other Nazis rises up and begins shooting. The editing and framing doesn't make it exactly clear where he just came from, but we'll get our bearings in the next shot. There's a goofy touch here in the way the Nazi is still wearing the card on his forehead. I believe it says "Mata Hari," a nice little wink to Inglourious Basterds' recurring themes of deception/subterfuge/etc.

Shot 11: Wicki is struck by the Nazi's bullets, and in turn begins to swing his gun towards the Nazi. We are beginning to establish a line of action between the two characters.

Shot 12: ...but first, we cross cut back to Stiglitz and the waitress, exchanging fire. We can clearly see the waitress take four hits. Arguably, there is a mistake here in that we haven't seen where Stiglitz got the gun from (see shot 9: the only thing he's holding is the glass, which he drops). It's not clear if he had another gun in his possession already, or if he took it from a corpse, but he arguably had enough time to grab another in the melee, though it would have had to have been quick. In the middle of the frame, that wussy Nazi is still struggling to find his gun. What a loser!

Shot 13: Cross back to Wicki, essentially the same shot as shot 11, who regains his footing and shoots. This time, it should be clear who he's firing at, even before the next shot confirms it.

Shot 14: Mati Hari is struck twice, in a particularly spectacular explosion of blood. The shot is essentially the same as shot 10. This next fact isn't important at all, as far as I can tell, but I just looked it up and Picon (an ad for which you can see in the upper left) is apparently a type of bitters.

Shot 15: (split into 4 screen grabs). We cross back again to Stiglitz duking it out with the waitress and loser-Nazi. The waitress is down for the count, but the Nazi appears to have finally found his gun. Which is really too bad, because his clumsiness has given Stiglitz enough time to kill him, too. The shot is framed the same as (or perhaps is a continuation of) shot 12... but there is a surprise. The camera whip pans over to the bar. During the pan, likely undetectable when played at normal speed, you can see the Nazi with whom Wicki has been exchanging fire crouching on the floor. The pan stops at the bartender, who is raising his shotgun (shown under the bar during the buildup). The camera then begins to abruptly zoom towards a closeup, similar to the one of the waitress in shot 8.

Shot 16: Although designed to look like part of shot 15, this appears to be a separate closeup of the bartender. The cut is somewhat hidden by the speed of the zoom. The bartender fires.

Shot 17: Based on the shot/reverse shot pattern of the last few exchanges, you might expect this shot to be of Stiglitz getting hit. Instead, Tarantino throws another curve ball and cuts to a closeup of Wicki firing, with the barrel of the bartender's shotgun in the extreme foreground. The camera does an accelerated zoom out to reveal the bartender as he gets hit, which plays almost as the reverse of the zoom in shot 15. We are never actually shown Stiglitz getting hit by the shotgun blast, but the last two shots have given us enough information to assume that he's kaput.

Shot 18: Cut to a reverse-angle closeup of the bartender as he falls backwards. I didn't pick a good screencap for it, but you can see that he's been smoking a cigarette the whole time, which is pretty badass.

Shot 19: Wait, there's still one more zoom! We get a rather dramatic zoom in on the other waitress' face as she screams. In all honesty, I'm not sure how this shot really furthers the action or visual storytelling, except that she is likely screaming because she can see what's about to happen in the next shot. Otherwise, it has a sort of, I don't know, Fritz Lang-ian expressionistic quality to it.

Shot 20: Sgt. Wilhelm, whose son was just born today, has been absent since the first shot of this sequence. He now unexpectedly returns at the far side of the bar, wielding a machine gun, firing wildly due to his intoxication, . This is the final surprise, the beginning of the end of the shootout.

Shot 21: Looking out from Wilhelm's POV now, the three other survivors form a The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly-esque triangle . Wilhelm's gunfire travels across the frame from right to left, piercing the waitress, Wicki, and the final Nazi on the left, with the walls and light fixtures catching stray bullets. The profound indiscrimination of Wilhelm's fire reminds me a bit of the ending of The Wild Bunch.

Shot 22: Back to Wilhelm as he finishes shooting, and begins to survey the damage that he's done. Whoops, probably didn't mean to shoot his fellow soldier.

Shot 23: And now, the punchline. We cut back to the wide shot of the tavern from shot 21, now eerily still except for the settling dust and smoke. There even appears to be some blood still floating in the haze. The action has ended, for now.

These 23 shots come in such rapid succession that it's almost a little difficult to process. The speed of the edits is likely to create a certain sense of chaos, but Tarantino respects the spacial relations of the scene (which sounds obvious, but so many action directors these days don't bother) and creates a logical sequence of events. After seeing it once, I doubt a viewer could draw a complex diagram of what happened to whom and when, but I also think that all the major moments come across clearly.

Going over the scene, I'm further impressed by its construction, and how much information is crammed into a short span of time. The shootout is a short story in its own right, with subplots that branch off from it, all with beginnings, middles, and endings. Hopefully, this post underlines what I think works about this scene.

Motherfuckers Act Like I Forgot to Mention Stuff in the Last Post

Knew I forgot something: Toy Story 3 was another remarkable movie I saw this summer, and I had a few quick thoughts on it.

When I first heard it announced that they were making another Toy Story movie, more than a decade after the last one was released, I didn't get it. I don't think I've seen the original films since their initial releases, but I recall them fondly. The first was a fun family film with a great premise, the second fleshed out the original's themes into something more poignant and special. In fact, Toy Story 2 so perfectly did what it did that it seemed like it should be the end. Why tarnish something wonderful by returning to it unnecessarily? I can't imagine the inspiration for part 3 being anything more noble than crassly trying to cash-in on the goodwill of the earlier films by bringing back the franchise. But as it turns out, they happened to make an excellent film during the crass cash-in.

I think I've mentioned this before when talking about Ratatouille, Up, Beowulf, and Kung Fu Panda, but animation is a great medium for action sequences, and like those other kids films, Toy Story 3 is something of a concealed action film. In a world smothered in frenetic, shaky cam, rapidly cut, spatially incoherent action sequences, animation offers us a fresh breath of deep focus, precisely pieced-together action that allows momentum to build through motion and logic, rather than ADHD editing room theatrics. Not to mention the way animation frees the creators to craft some truly unique set pieces, as well as gives them access to an untethered, weightless "camera" that can get shots that would be impossible in the real world.

Part of the great fun of this film is that the last act, detailing the toys' escape from a day care center, is essentially a prison break movie that climaxes in an extended chase scene, a la The Great Escape. It's a veritable masterpiece of technical craftsmanship, punctuated by all sorts of delightfully clever ideas (Mr. Potato Head creating a new, unstable body by putting his appendages into a tortilla, which is attacked by hungry pigeons; a cymbal-banging monkey as a security guard; little plastic toy bins used as jail cells; so on) that put a goofy spin on the genre. It's the most intense action sequence I've seen in a good many years (in fact, potentially too intense and emotionally upsetting for small children... the toys come A LOT closer to mortal peril than you might expect) and it's in a freakin' kids movie.

I'm not going to lie and pretend I didn't have a strong emotional reaction to the film as well, but I did wonder if perhaps it, thematically speaking, hewed a little too close to the second film. As I remember it, that film was all about the toys coming to terms with the fact that their owner, Andy, was going to grow up one day and leave them behind. That was why so many adults connected with the film: it was a sneaky metaphor for parenthood. The climax of Toy Story 3 pushes all those same buttons, having Andy heading off to college, and it brushes a little too close to redundancy for my liking. What saves it is that they find a new angle in the material; this time, it focuses on Andy as well, illustrating his conflicted emotions about heading off to school and leaving his family/toy/childhood behind.

And fuck it, you know what? I want to talk about Step Up 3D a little bit while I have you here. I'm not shocking anyone when I say it's a silly, stupid movie filled with stock characters and dusty, shop worn cliches by the dozen. But it does a few things, and does them very well, that I greatly cherished. Film can be an artform of great narrative, thematic and emotional depth, but it doesn't always have to be. It can also be an artform that records performance, and celebrates motion and light in a unique and indelible way. Step Up 3D is an infectiously goofy, breathless dance flick that presents a neon colored world of nonstop kinetic energy; it also exploits the gimmick of 3D better than any other live action movie in recent memory. Bubbles, balloons and the dancers themselves are thrust out of the screen towards the audience; the dancers dance on a flooded stage, on a stage covered in white powder, and for their big finale, put on silly looking futuristic shirts with colored lights on them that add a synchronized light show to their dance routine. I kinda loved it.

I suppose the movie is indefensible on the level of dialogue and character, except to say that it has a charming dopiness about it; my frequent laughter was affectionate and not derisive. It presents such a gloriously fantastical world, one where uniformed dance gangs challenge each other to impromptu dance battles in public places, that you couldn't have wiped the dumb smile off my face with a squeegee.

Let me put it like this: I like old musicals and dance movies. While Step Up 3D clearly doesn't have a screenplay as strong or witty as, say, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or Singin' in the Rain, it provides the same kind catching, winning fun. The high point of the film, for me, was a Fred-and-Ginger-inspired dance number between two of the leads on the streets of New York, dancing up doorsteps, putting trashcan lids on their feet for some softshoe, shaking tree leaves on themselves for a kinda snowy effect, etc., all done in one shot. It comes dangerously close to being magical, which is more than most mainstream entertainment aspires to.

Motherfuckers Act Like They Forgot About Dan

Hey all you out there in internetland. Just a quick update since I haven't posted here in a few weeks.

First thing's first: my girlfriend got a Twitter account and didn't want to try it alone, so I fucking caved and got one myself. You can read my 140-character-or-less thoughts @ASeriousDan. I haven't really found much use for it, except I'm posting a tweet (that's what they call it, right? "Posting a tweet"?) every time I watch a movie, with a mini-review and rating. I know, I know, what a perfect way to insightfully analyze film. Everyone else might as well just give up, I think I've reached the pinnacle of film criticism.

I did originally create this blog to talk about movies, so here are a few fast thoughts about some of the more remarkable recent films I've seen.

Debra Granik's Winter's Bone, about a teenage girl from the Ozarks searching for her missing meth dealer father before the state seizes their home, could have been a piece of miserablist poverty porn a la Precious Based On the Novel Push By Saffire. Instead, Granik crafted it into a skillful thriller and richly detailed slice of life. When the film first started, its desaturated color palette and handheld camera work had me worried it was going to be some sort of self-consciously gritty, self-important bit of Indie faux-realism, but for once this overused style works. As much as it is a film about a girl traveling to the depths of the meth underworld in a desperate bid to save her family, it's also a film about a specific time and place that creates a densely textured world without beating you over the head with it. A masterpiece of set design, it keeps finding all the right details, from the lizard cage in a drug dealer's trailer, to a little girl hopping around on her toy horse on the old trampoline stashed in her backyard. The film also signals Jennifer Lawrence, the lead, as an actress to keep tabs on. And more impressively it casts a whole new light on John Hawkes; known for playing twerps, here he gives a surprising turn as "Teardrop," an intimidating drug dealer who slowly reveals (just the slightest, mind you) amount of humanity when shit hits the fan.

Completely confounding to me was Alain Resnais's Wild Grass, but I mean that in a good way. It starts off something like a Jeunet film, a quirky fable about about a lonely dentist and a strange old man whose paths cross by chance, introducing all sorts of different plot strands that seem about to come together. Instead, the film pulls back layer after layer to reveal a bizarre creepiness under the light romantic comedy surface, and when the story finally "comes together," it is in a way that makes no sense and doesn't seem to answer anything. It's like the anti-Amelie. Like Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad, it almost seems like a self-conscious admission/analysis of its own impenetrability (albeit more playful and funny than that film) and an invitation to revel in its glorious artificiality, in this case a world of rich candy colors, flights of fancy and imagination, and energetic, show-offy camera work.

And of course I have to mention Inception. There's a lot you can (rightly) criticize about the film: it's depiction of dreams and the mind are almost perversely literal; Christopher Nolan still can't film a good shoot-out; with a few brief exceptions, the film wastes ample opportunities to deliver mindblowing visuals and/or surrealism. Yeah, I think Nolan is far too logical and not visually oriented enough to really make a movie about dreams. Instead, what he did was use his strengths in editing and story-craft to make a great heist/con movie style thriller. The "dream" motif is little more than a gimmick that allows Nolan to create some truly awesome set pieces, freeing him to play with time, space, gravity, parallel action, and so on. The last half of the movie is like one long suspense sequence (or more accurately, dozens of suspense sequences piled on top of each other and happening simultaneously) that doesn't let up for a second, even leaving us hanging when the film cuts to credits. It's not the best film I've seen so far this year (That would probably be either Winter's Bone or Bong Joon-Ho's Mother), but it is the most fun... but I'll have to see it again to determine if the film's nearly wall-to-wall exposition drags it down when you already know what's going on.

Journey Through the Past, Mission Accomplished...

... Sort of.

With the posting of my Fork in the Road, I have officially reached the end of my massive, 55-ish Neil Young album collection and thus the end of this project. Except that during these last three months, I incidentally ended up picking up a few Neil albums that I didn't cover (the third Buffalo Springfield album, Vol. 1 of the Neil Young Archives, Decade, some other random things) that I should probably address. I'm a little burned out, so I won't be getting to them right away, but I hope to pepper them in over the next month or so.

And if I'm feeling up to it I may, as an addendum to this whole project, post about a few tangentially connected items... including a non-Neil Crazy Horse album, a Stephen Stills solo album and a few other ideas I have. The idea would be to review them on their own merits, but also evaluate/compare them from a Neil-centric perspective as well.

I'd also like to get back to writing about movies on this blog (my original intention with it), so I'll try to carve out some time for that soon.

Fork in the Road

See, Living With War, this is how you do a political album. Fork in the Road is charmingly offbeat in its subject matter, inspired by Lincvolt, Neil Young's Lincoln Continental which he had modified to run on alternative energy. He uses this as a jumping off point mainly to talk about environmental issues, although he does touch on a few other topics. What helps Fork succeed where War sometimes faltered is both the general tone of the lyrics (more playful, hopeful, and thoughtful), and notably stronger songwriting. Oh, and it rocks harder.

I've always questioned the usefulness of rigidly specific political art. Does its subject matter date the material and make it irrelevant a few years down the line? Does the artist perhaps have a further obligation to make the work connect on other levels beyond its literal subject matter? One thing I admire about this album is its acknowledgment of these issues. On "Just Singing a Song," Neil says "You can sing about change/While you're making your own/You can be what you try to say/While the big wheel rolls/Just singing a song won't change the world."

Neil doesn't opt for any Crazy Horse-ian long-winded jams, but the album is heavy on groovy riffs. He brags about his electric car and celebrates life on the open road in the two opening tracks, "When World's Collide" and "Fuel Line," both bluesy hard rock tunes. That's essentially the predominant tone for most of the album, but he strays in a few places. The second to last song, "Light a Candle," is an acoustic ballad; the tone it strikes is a little melancholy, but the lyrics are consistent with Fork's forwarding looking, optimistic message ("Instead of cursin' the darkness/Light a candle for where we're goin'/There's somethin' ahead worth lookin' for").

My favorite song is probably "Cough Up the Bucks," presumably about the financial crisis. It's a little darker and more bitter than the other songs, but also a little more humorous, and the lyrics mainly consist of Neil repeating the title over and over anyway. What makes the song awesome is the music. My words will be deficient in trying to explain the quirkiness of the main riff, but I'll give it a shot: its a catchy hard rock riff seemingly made up of guitar harmonics, distortion and (I'm making up this term because I don't know how to describe it) "muffing" the strings with his hand, and not exactly playing any identifiable chords or notes. And it sounds sweet.

The only really low point on Fork in the Road is "Johnny Magic ," a tribute to the mechanic who put together Lincvolt. It's a little too peppy and corny for my tastes, and features some obnoxious backup singers piping in with "Johnny Magic! Johnny Magic!" incessantly in the background. Plus, every time I read the song's title, it makes me think of the crappy Tears For Fears song "Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams," and then I have two stupid songs stuck in my head.

Will Fork end up like Living With War in a few years and feel irrelevant? I don't know. Right now, a little over a year after its release, with the whole horrible BP spill bullshit going on, it feels even more relevant than before. We'll see if it holds up. The album and title song's central metaphor says it all; we're at a crossroads and now's the time to make the right choices. And if we make those choices, this album could be a quaint antique in a few years. In which case, maybe irrelevancy would be a good thing.

Rating: B +

Chrome Dreams II

You might be wondering right now, "What happened to Chrome Dreams I?" In a not atypical bout of perverseness on Neil's part, Chrome Dreams II is the sequel to an album he recorded in the 70's... and never released.

You can chalk this one up as yet another in a long, varied, seemingly endless line of Neil Young albums that I didn't recognize as being pretty good until now. It's the kind of album Neil doesn't actually release too often, especially in the later years of his career. Usually, he picks a style/genre for an album and sticks with it, but Chrome Dreams II is fairly diverse, probably the most so since Freedom's release nearly 20 years earlier. It gives you mellow acoustic ballads ("Beautiful Bluebird"), Everybody Knows This is Nowhere-esque classic rock jams ("Spirit Road"), Crazy Horse-style garage rock ("Dirty Old Man"), Are You Passionate?-like soul, and even an oddball piano diddley with a choir of children singing backup ("The Way").

In fact, the album's best song, "Ordinary People," an epic 18-minute rocker (possibly his longest studio track ever) with a backup horn section, was originally written This Note's For You era... shocking, because of how vastly superior this song is to anything on that album. Why Neil didn't release it then, I'll never know, but it's one of his all-time best. It cycles repeatedly through, I believe, only 2 different chord progressions and one horn line, plugging in multiple guitar and sax solos. Each verse is essentially a self-contained short story, with no more of a specific common theme than "people," and lord knows how he remembers all of the lyrics, because there are lots of them. It's hard to pick a favorite verse, but for some reason I'm really fond of the part where he sings about "Downtown people/Tryin' to make their way to work/Nose to the stone people/Some are saints, and some are jerks." Not as good but still memorable is "No Hidden Path," itself 14 minutes long. Together with "Ordinary People," the two songs make up nearly half of the album.

Save "Ordinary People," there isn't much great material on the album, but what I failed to acknowledge until now is that most of it is solid, good. There's not really a weak link on the album, even if there's only one classic track. I very much enjoyed listening through it a few times for this project, and have no idea why I was so dismissive of it back in 2007. The best I can guess is that Neil has many great albums, that it's hard to recognize the positive qualities of an album that's simply "good."

Rating: B

Déjà Vu Live (as a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

Seeing as this is the final CSNY album I will be blogging about for "Journey Through the Past," perhaps I should say a few words. If you've looked through this whole massive, nearly finished project, then you've noticed that CSNY albums tend to be rated lower than Neil Young's solo albums. It's not so much that I actively dislike Crosby, Stills or Nash (well, maybe Crosby a little, but all three have made music I enjoy). It's more that I don't like them nearly as much as Neil, and I feel like he doesn't really collaborate well with them. There are some excellent Neil Young songs on the CSNY albums, but they tend to make up some of his most mainstream, least interesting, least experimental material. When he teams up with these guys, it seems to be more for the combined star power than for any sense that they push him into new creative territory.

On the other hand, I think CSN are wonderful performers, especially their vocals, and they make a great back-up band for Neil. During the 3 months I've been working on this, I bit the bullet and purchased Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (which I may eventually do a retroactive post about, or at least about the Live at the Riverboat album included in it). One of the greatest pleasures on it, no lie, are the live versions of CSNY playing Neil's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart" and "Tell Me Why." CSNs lovely harmonies layer perfectly under Neil's music.

So I feel a little ambivalent about Déjà Vu Live, which should more accurately be called Living With War Live, plus a few random Crosby, Stills & Nash songs. The performances are most definitely superior to the original studio versions, but I'm still not crazy about all the songs. The performances of good songs like "Living With War" and "After the Garden" are possibly their best versions, but two of that album's better songs ("The Restless Consumer" and "Flags of Freedom") are missing, while all the crappy ones are present and accounted for. The CSN songs on the album are solid enough (good performances of Nash's "Military Madness," Stills' "For What It's Worth," and Crosby's "What Are Their Names?"), but nothing essential, as the songs were selected more for their political content than their classic-ness.

With a better track listing, this could have shaped up as one of CSNY's best. As it stands, its an album of excellent performances of inconsistent material.

Rating: C +

Living With War - In the Beginning

What a difference production can make. Essentially the live studio tracks from Living With War, minus the 100-strong choir, the stripped down sound of In the Beginning significantly changes the tone of the album. The lack of the choir; the grungy, less polished sound; and especially Neil's frail, Tonight's the Night-esque straining-for-the-notes vocals... it makes the album sound personal, intimate, and like its coming from a place of passion moreso than self-righteousness.

The material is still inconsistent, the lyrics still make it too much of a relic. "Let's Impeach the President" will always be an obnoxiously smug song, no matter how its played. But the good songs (especially "After the Garden," "Living With War," and "Flags of Freedom") are even better now, and this is by far the preferable of the two albums.

Rating: C +

Living With War

So back in 2006, Neil Young made a protest album about how much he didn't like George W. Bush. Nothing inherently wrong with that, but Living With War falls victim to the pitfalls common to political music. The most obvious of which is how, only 4 years later, the album is dated to the point of irrelevance. We're living in Barack Obama's America now, so the specificity of some of these songs is distracting; they serve no function outside of their original context. I suppose there's value as historical documentation, but it's difficult to get worked up over the criticisms that don't apply any more.

The other major flaw with the album is the tone of smugness and self-righteousness that infects some of the songs, which is not an attractive quality in music. This primarily manifests itself in the lyrics. Personally, I think political music works best when it comes from a place of passion, or dark humor, or hope. But gloating condescension and moral superiority just make the artist sound a little assholish.

My least favorite song is "Let's Impeach the President," where Neil offers the bon mot "Thank god he's cracking down on steroids/Since he sold his old baseball team." To be honest, though, what really rubs me wrong about the song is Neil's use of "let's" and "we" and "our" and other inclusive terms when, despite the fact that he's lived here for many years, he's not a US citizen. I don't mind a Canadian insulting our president, but I don't think he should be including himself in the "let's." He scoffs about "the days of Mission Accomplished" on "Shock and Aww." He insists that "The people have spoken/You might not like what they said/But they weren't joking" on "The Restless Consumer." And on "Looking For a Leader" I feel that he starts to pander, saying the next president could be "a woman, or a black man after all," a line that only exists to get applause. (Not to mention, why no shout-out to Jews, Asians, Hispanics, Muslims and the countless other minorities who have never held America's highest office?)

Problems extend to the music itself. The album was cranked out pretty quickly, and there's a Greendale-like sense of the music being subordinate to the lyrics. The overall sound of the album is Crazy Horse-esque midtempo rock, with the welcome occasional addition of a trumpet. Okay, but then Neil decided to go ahead and record a 100-person choir singing backup for all of the songs. Even ignoring the fact that it adds to the album's sometimes self-righteous tone (as it's, I can only assume, supposed to be the voice of America joining Neil in speakin' out), it just sounds like shit. It doesn't match the album's grungy, low-fi sound, and is awkwardly layered in under all the fuzz. It has the grating quality of one of those Kidz Bop albums they always used to show commercials for on TV; tuneless, homogenized and obnoxious.

The album does shine on a few occasions, usually when Neil gets less specific and tries to process things poetically and personally (as I've mentioned many times before, I tend to think he should stick to writing inward). The album's opener, "After the Garden," is a catchy and effective cautionary tale about the post-apocalyptic world we may be living in if we don't take better care of the planet. On "Flags of Freedom," Neil sings "Have you seen the flags of freedom?/What color are they now?/Do you think that you believe in yours/More than they do theirs somehow?", a powerful sentiment that seems both more timeless and generalized, and a little more thoughtful and nuanced than many of the other lyrics on the album. The best song, by far, is the title track, a beautiful and moving song about the emotional toll of war that is so eloquent in its antiwar message that it, frankly, makes the rest of the album seem pointless.

Rating: C