What in the heck was wrong with that?
Jun. 22nd, 2004 01:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatTo distract myself from the brick wall I just hit in my job search..I decided to write a review of Salem's lot, then I got stuck so I read my FL list, which in turn caused me to wander off to fanfic_hate, curiousity you know. Fanfic_hate is an experience - sort of like revisiting your sixth grade classroom, when people thought criticism and being a jerk sort of went hand in hand. (Although not all the posters are like that - I did see some constructive threads - but these tended to be ones signed by livejournal posters.) This got me to thinking about constructive criticism - in school I learned how to criticize things without pulling punches but also without harming the person who wrote or created it. A nifty balancing act, to be sure. The best way to learn is to take a creative writing workshop - where you have to write something and sit in a room, not say a word, while your classmates tear it to pieces. It teaches you how to give and take criticism. Also since you are giving the criticism face to face and are forced to sign off on it - you have to think through your thoughts first. You can't be a jerk. There's no safe computer screen to hide behind. First rule of criticism - sign off on it - give a name. If you can't do that? Then your criticism deserves as much attention as a blank piece of paper. No one is standing behind it. Enuf soap box.
Salem's Lot - the 2004 version: Why it did not work.
The recent TNT mini-series Salem's Lot is an interesting one to criticize, because it does not work. If it had been good or even marginally good, I wouldn't bother with it. But it wasn't.
And what is interesting is why. Why didn't Salem's Lot work?
The story is about a man who comes back to his hometown to face old ghosts. He finds vampires. Like most of Stephen King's novels, it takes place in a small town in Maine. It is populated by dysfunctional characters and has at its root a troubled writer. This is not the first time Salem's Lot was made into a miniseries - in the 1970s/80s David Soul did a miniseries based on the book. Campy in places, the David Soul miniseries contained what this new version lacks - heart. You cared about the characters. You wanted to get to know them. You didn't want them to die. And you worried about them.
I re-watched portions of the old movie Aliens, with Signourney Weaver, Lance Henrickson, and Michael Biehn on Sunday - and was struck with how enjoyable this film was. The characters were captivating. It wasn't the horrific parts I wanted to rewatch, it was the quieter moments - the moments where Ripley is introduced to the Marines occupanying her on the mission - the gritty in your face banter, her interaction with the Artifical Lifeform she can't trust, and her flirtation with Michael Beihn's character. JAWS is another horror movie that I find myself re-watching every time it comes on - why? Again the small character moments. My favorites are when Roy Schroeder's character wakes up in the morning and has breakfast with his family and goes to the office before he discovers there has been a shark attack. The town hall meeting. And of course the three men in the boat sequence where they discuss old shark stories. These moments are vital to horror movies, because horror movies do not work if you do not care about the characters. If the audience isn't inside their heads and feeling what they feel. Horror movies cannot afford to disconnect the characters from the audience. Without that connection the audience becomes aware of the fact that they are just watching some actor get bitten by another actor or special effect.
So where did this new sparkling version of Salem's Lot go wrong? Was it the casting? No, stellar cast, all of whom have proven themselves in other ventures. Nor were they in any way miscast. Was it the direction? No, the camera work was actually quite lovely in places. There's a couple of camera shots in the last two hours that blew me away. One is in the kitchen of the boarding house - the camera eerily focuses on each item of the breakfast being made, a normal breakfast by all accounts but clearly something is off in the house, which is shown by a series of oddly placed camera angles and sound effects heightening the tension. Another is in the church, where the priest fills up containers of holy water, the camera is positioned in the holy water receptacle and above it. We see the priest being slightly off-kilter with the water pulling back from him. Was it the story? No, the story is the same one as in the book and interesting. Was it the characters? Not exactly - the characters in of themselves are interesting. The writing? Yes. It is all exposition, with the exception of maybe a few pieces of dialogue here and there that barely register. One character tells a lame joke which three other characters don't even hear or respond to - something about a hippy vampire being cool. The writer is *telling* us the story, not showing it to us. He tells us who these people are through speeches or references made by other characters, instead of showing. While this may occassionally be excusable in a novel, it does not work in film - which is a visual medium. The actors are constantly giving speeches about themselves or their situations. We don't really get to spend time with them - except in small snippets here and there, which provide cliche character sketchs - the abusive husband, the trailer-trash wife, the bad developer, the goth daughter, the ineffectual/ tired sheriff, the pathetic boyfriend ...when they are on screen their dialogue doesn't captivate instead it distances the audience. Example: the heroine introduces herself to the hero in the following manner: "Hello I'm Susan, I wait tables at my mother's restaurant, because I couldn't be an artist in New York. I loved your work." Then we get a two minute scene where they talk about emailing each other. We don't see her go to the library to research his novel, or see her interact with the guy in town who also likes her. Instead, we are told she went to the library after the fact - as an explanation for why her mother and the whole town know about Ben Mears interests. Granted the point of view is supposed to be a narrow one - Mears. But we never get a sense of what Mears is thinking outside of his long narrative speeches about small towns and small town life. We don't know what he has really done. The most we get is a brief snippet in a high school classroom with his old teacher and that teacher's class.
But the relationship with the old teacher is never really developed. So we don't really care what happens to the teacher. It's sort of like watching the characters through a veil of water - the writer keeps them at arms length, never letting us get close to any of them. As a result, the film isn't scarey so much as borderline creepy. Missing this one vital incredient, the development of satisfying characters - the film completely misfires. Shame, considering the cast - which proves that even the best actor can not save a poorly written script.
Had somewhat the same response to Mystic River, which was much better written but still suffered from keeping me at a distance from the characters. The characters in Mystic River - beautifully acted, seemed in some respects old cliches taken from other films. Too much time was wasted on the police discussing the mystery, and too little on what the film was really about the three men/boys at it's center. Mystic River hinges on the audience understanding the ambiguious relationship between those three men - played to perfection by Bacon, Robbins, and Penn - but never quite delivers. We don't really know that much about them outside of standard cliches, one is a crook, one a cop, and one damaged goods - molested and abused and potentially a murderer. The actors bring the characters to life and show how much they care for one another, but the script does not let us know enough of where they'd been. Who they were. Except for a quick introductory snippet. So at the end, while tragic, you still feel removed from it. As if there's something missing that you can't quite put your finger on - that key ingredient which would make the film a masterpiece. After seeing Mystic River - I changed my mind about Lost in Translation and Bill Murray's performance. I actually think Bill Murray did deserve the best actor nod this year over Penn. Unfortunately for Murray, the decision probably was not based on Penn's performance in Mystic River solely, but on all those other nominations and films he'd done. Shame. Because Murray's character in Lost was better drawn and far more nuanced than Penn's Jimmy. Had little to do with the acting though and everything to do with how each role was written. And in that case, I suppose the chips fell where they should. Lost did win for best original screenplay.
If you want to see a film that does this right? Bubba Ho-Pec. A small film based on a short story - about two old guys who believe they are Elvis and JFK in a retirement home hunting a mummy. The two lead characters are so well drawn that you feel as if you are sitting in the room with them. The horror is both comical and real. Even the villian - Bubba Ho-pec is three-dimensional and we get that through flashes. Bubba Ho-Pec starring Bill Campbell and Ozzie Davis is a small film that is brilliantly written and cast. Everything works. From visuals that include Elvis dualing with a giant egyptian beetle that he believes is a cockroach to the nurse putting goo on Elvis' pecker. We don't see the pecker, it's implied by dialogue and the actors. Point of view throughout remains Elvis' and it does not in any way restrict the development of the other characters or the tension. Bubba Ho-Pec does everything that Salem's Lot should have done but didn't - it concentrated on building and developing fascinating characters.
Salem's Lot - the 2004 version: Why it did not work.
The recent TNT mini-series Salem's Lot is an interesting one to criticize, because it does not work. If it had been good or even marginally good, I wouldn't bother with it. But it wasn't.
And what is interesting is why. Why didn't Salem's Lot work?
The story is about a man who comes back to his hometown to face old ghosts. He finds vampires. Like most of Stephen King's novels, it takes place in a small town in Maine. It is populated by dysfunctional characters and has at its root a troubled writer. This is not the first time Salem's Lot was made into a miniseries - in the 1970s/80s David Soul did a miniseries based on the book. Campy in places, the David Soul miniseries contained what this new version lacks - heart. You cared about the characters. You wanted to get to know them. You didn't want them to die. And you worried about them.
I re-watched portions of the old movie Aliens, with Signourney Weaver, Lance Henrickson, and Michael Biehn on Sunday - and was struck with how enjoyable this film was. The characters were captivating. It wasn't the horrific parts I wanted to rewatch, it was the quieter moments - the moments where Ripley is introduced to the Marines occupanying her on the mission - the gritty in your face banter, her interaction with the Artifical Lifeform she can't trust, and her flirtation with Michael Beihn's character. JAWS is another horror movie that I find myself re-watching every time it comes on - why? Again the small character moments. My favorites are when Roy Schroeder's character wakes up in the morning and has breakfast with his family and goes to the office before he discovers there has been a shark attack. The town hall meeting. And of course the three men in the boat sequence where they discuss old shark stories. These moments are vital to horror movies, because horror movies do not work if you do not care about the characters. If the audience isn't inside their heads and feeling what they feel. Horror movies cannot afford to disconnect the characters from the audience. Without that connection the audience becomes aware of the fact that they are just watching some actor get bitten by another actor or special effect.
So where did this new sparkling version of Salem's Lot go wrong? Was it the casting? No, stellar cast, all of whom have proven themselves in other ventures. Nor were they in any way miscast. Was it the direction? No, the camera work was actually quite lovely in places. There's a couple of camera shots in the last two hours that blew me away. One is in the kitchen of the boarding house - the camera eerily focuses on each item of the breakfast being made, a normal breakfast by all accounts but clearly something is off in the house, which is shown by a series of oddly placed camera angles and sound effects heightening the tension. Another is in the church, where the priest fills up containers of holy water, the camera is positioned in the holy water receptacle and above it. We see the priest being slightly off-kilter with the water pulling back from him. Was it the story? No, the story is the same one as in the book and interesting. Was it the characters? Not exactly - the characters in of themselves are interesting. The writing? Yes. It is all exposition, with the exception of maybe a few pieces of dialogue here and there that barely register. One character tells a lame joke which three other characters don't even hear or respond to - something about a hippy vampire being cool. The writer is *telling* us the story, not showing it to us. He tells us who these people are through speeches or references made by other characters, instead of showing. While this may occassionally be excusable in a novel, it does not work in film - which is a visual medium. The actors are constantly giving speeches about themselves or their situations. We don't really get to spend time with them - except in small snippets here and there, which provide cliche character sketchs - the abusive husband, the trailer-trash wife, the bad developer, the goth daughter, the ineffectual/ tired sheriff, the pathetic boyfriend ...when they are on screen their dialogue doesn't captivate instead it distances the audience. Example: the heroine introduces herself to the hero in the following manner: "Hello I'm Susan, I wait tables at my mother's restaurant, because I couldn't be an artist in New York. I loved your work." Then we get a two minute scene where they talk about emailing each other. We don't see her go to the library to research his novel, or see her interact with the guy in town who also likes her. Instead, we are told she went to the library after the fact - as an explanation for why her mother and the whole town know about Ben Mears interests. Granted the point of view is supposed to be a narrow one - Mears. But we never get a sense of what Mears is thinking outside of his long narrative speeches about small towns and small town life. We don't know what he has really done. The most we get is a brief snippet in a high school classroom with his old teacher and that teacher's class.
But the relationship with the old teacher is never really developed. So we don't really care what happens to the teacher. It's sort of like watching the characters through a veil of water - the writer keeps them at arms length, never letting us get close to any of them. As a result, the film isn't scarey so much as borderline creepy. Missing this one vital incredient, the development of satisfying characters - the film completely misfires. Shame, considering the cast - which proves that even the best actor can not save a poorly written script.
Had somewhat the same response to Mystic River, which was much better written but still suffered from keeping me at a distance from the characters. The characters in Mystic River - beautifully acted, seemed in some respects old cliches taken from other films. Too much time was wasted on the police discussing the mystery, and too little on what the film was really about the three men/boys at it's center. Mystic River hinges on the audience understanding the ambiguious relationship between those three men - played to perfection by Bacon, Robbins, and Penn - but never quite delivers. We don't really know that much about them outside of standard cliches, one is a crook, one a cop, and one damaged goods - molested and abused and potentially a murderer. The actors bring the characters to life and show how much they care for one another, but the script does not let us know enough of where they'd been. Who they were. Except for a quick introductory snippet. So at the end, while tragic, you still feel removed from it. As if there's something missing that you can't quite put your finger on - that key ingredient which would make the film a masterpiece. After seeing Mystic River - I changed my mind about Lost in Translation and Bill Murray's performance. I actually think Bill Murray did deserve the best actor nod this year over Penn. Unfortunately for Murray, the decision probably was not based on Penn's performance in Mystic River solely, but on all those other nominations and films he'd done. Shame. Because Murray's character in Lost was better drawn and far more nuanced than Penn's Jimmy. Had little to do with the acting though and everything to do with how each role was written. And in that case, I suppose the chips fell where they should. Lost did win for best original screenplay.
If you want to see a film that does this right? Bubba Ho-Pec. A small film based on a short story - about two old guys who believe they are Elvis and JFK in a retirement home hunting a mummy. The two lead characters are so well drawn that you feel as if you are sitting in the room with them. The horror is both comical and real. Even the villian - Bubba Ho-pec is three-dimensional and we get that through flashes. Bubba Ho-Pec starring Bill Campbell and Ozzie Davis is a small film that is brilliantly written and cast. Everything works. From visuals that include Elvis dualing with a giant egyptian beetle that he believes is a cockroach to the nurse putting goo on Elvis' pecker. We don't see the pecker, it's implied by dialogue and the actors. Point of view throughout remains Elvis' and it does not in any way restrict the development of the other characters or the tension. Bubba Ho-Pec does everything that Salem's Lot should have done but didn't - it concentrated on building and developing fascinating characters.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-22 12:58 pm (UTC)On the whole, I enjoyed it, but that's possibly because I think Bruce Campbell is funny on sticks.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-22 02:34 pm (UTC)I agree on Mystic River. I felt the pacing was off, and it was a bit cliched, though the performances were good.
And oddly enough, you're the second person to recommend Bubba Ho-Pec. :-)
Ahhhhhhhhhhh
Date: 2004-06-22 04:37 pm (UTC)I haven't seen Salem's Lot but have heard good and bad about it. Best thing is that I can forget the connection with Stephen King if I know the movie will be bad. The original I have on DVD.
Bubba Ho-tep was hilarious considering you could plunk down any of the Scooby gang and fast forward to a retirment home where Xander is still fighting evil from a wheel chair...as for his pecker, who knows...;)
Rufus