MovieSunday: Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts

Above is the preview for a little Pixar/Disney animation that was shown in theaters with the "Incredibles 2" movie last year.  It is one of the finalists for an Academy Award in its category this evening, and my guess is it will win because 1) it's from Pixar and 2) more people have seen it.

I saw "Bao" along with the other finalists at a theater on Friday.  While I'm not interested in prize competitions -- too artificial, too responsive to fads of a given moment -- I do appreciate that the Oscar shorts are available for viewing in theaters around this time of year.  (A second shorts award is given for documentaries, and a roundup of those finalists still may be in theaters tomorrow.)

But back to "Bao."  It is the fantasy story of a Chinese mother in Toronto who is bereft after her son has  grown up and left the house.  To her surprise, another child sprouts from a stuffed Chinese baozi roll before she can pop it into the steamer.  She re-lives the joy of motherhood until she doesn't, and then something nice happens to knit the story together in a bittersweet sort of way that, ala Pixar,  mixes families, feelings and food to generate emotional nostalgia.

Domee Shi, now of Pixar, made the piece, a nice little 9-minute movie that you can live-stream at home for $1.99.


The Others


Late Afternoon (click for Vimeo promo)

This is a simple revery from Cartoon Saloon, the Irish animation studio.  In it, an older woman has a cuppa tea in her home as she recalls moments from her early life.  These are rendered in impressionistic, water color-styled images that start with childhood moments at the seashore and proceed through adulthood in a lovely and moving way. The creator, Louise Bagnall, has said she conjured the piece from memories of her grandmothers.


Weekends

Yet another personal story, also set in Toronto (in the 1980s) comes from Trevor Jimenez, now of Pixar.  It recalls his life shortly after his parents had divorced and when he was shuffled back and forth between their homes.  We understand the parents are different because the mom plays an arid Erik Satie piece on the piano and the father lives his life to the guitar riff from the Dire Straits "Money for Nothing."

The parents are distracted and pay little attention to their small child, who fills his mind with fantasies about riding a large antique horse, imagining the lives of animals he sees outside the window and wondering about another child who waves to him from an apartment far away.  Call it a cartoon that feels like truth.


One Small Step

This is the first project from Taiko Studios, a group of former Disney animators from China and the US.  Its plot involves a Chinese American girl, Luna, who dreams of becoming an astronaut.  Her father, a shoemaker, encourages her fantasies with moon boots, a helmet and a pretend space ship.  She grows up and there are disappointments, but as one of the animators has said, "All dreams begin with a single step."

Because this has a clearer narrative than "Late Afternoon" and "Weekends," this little feature might appeal more to children than the other two, but it also concerns itself with its main character's internal experience.


Animal Behaviour

This production from Vancouver, B.C.  is a too-witty-by-half story of a therapy group attended by animals with human problems -- guilt, OCD, relationship problems, separation anxiety, among them.  The group is led by a pit bull named Dr. Clement, who of course shares his own experiences.
Into the group comes an ape with a hot temper.  Wackiness ensues.

I don't particularly mind cartoons that anthropomorphize animals, but the idea is not particularly new (Mickey Mouse, anyone?) and the tensions between animal instincts and human psychology didn't work for me.  In short, this is a pleasant piece that aims for laughs where the other entries were more keenly felt and sincere.


Closing Note

In a film world that has hijacked children's animation and loaded it up with excess conflict and CGI distraction, the simple honesties of the first four of these movies were a pleasure to watch.  After the Academy Awards presentation tonight, perhaps we will have an opportunity to share them with family and friends.

The Allure of Victimhood

Sadly, this 2015 piece remains relevant today.

Kean University in New Jersey is the sort of state school that I admire.  For generations, it has been educating immigrants and students who are the first in their families to attend college.

Its 12,000 undergraduates are ethnically diverse: 45.2 percent Hispanic and African American, 38 percent white and the rest mostly from other minority groups. The faculty is about 10 percent African American,  a rate most colleges would be proud to report.

In evaluations, Kean students consistently remark that they appreciate the diversity of their campus. So it was not surprising that on the evening of November 17,  about 100 of them were participating in a peaceful rally in support of black student protests at other colleges.

Then, around 10:30 p.m., a recent graduate -- the school's 2014 Homecoming Queen and former president of its Pan African Student Union -- joined the group with distressing news.

She shared twitter posts that she had discovered by a tweeter called @keanuagainstblk.  There were 10 racist tweets.  Here are a few:

     "kean university twitter against blacks is for everyone who hates blacks people"

     "KU Police, I will kill all the blacks tonight, tomorrow and any other day if they go to Kean                  University"

     "Kean University there's a bomb on your campus"


Reaction

Students and school leaders naturally were horrified.

One student tweet:

     @keanuagainstblk @kupolice HOW MUCH MORE DIRECT EVIDENCE DO YOU
     NEED? RACISM IS REAL,THIS IS A THREAT! ACT NOW!

Campus, local, state and federal law enforcement agencies immediately began investigations and strengthened campus security.  The school president urged students to come to school the next day, but many did not, which was understandable in the circumstances.

Within a few days, a group of black New Jersey ministers demanded the resignation of the school president.  One said this:

     The deplorable death threat against black students on the campus of Kean University did
     not happen in a vacuum, but arose from a climate of racial intolerance that has been allowed
     to fester for years under this president's watch.

Another said this.

     While we should all be shocked about the threat that was made against black students, those
     of us who are familiar with the atmosphere at Kean and who have talked with faculty and
     students are not surprised this happened.  Just as the case at the University of Missouri,
     President ______  has been tone deaf on the issue of race.

Again, all very understandable.

(Some in New Jersey earlier had urged dismissal of the president, who is not black, for other reasons -- the near loss of Kean's accreditation, a $219,000 conference table, his relationship with a major political boss -- but his contract was extended for five years after those objections came to light.  It's Chinatown, Jake.)


The Culprit

By now you have guessed who posted the offensive tweets.  It was the activist alumna who "discovered" them.

It appears that she left the campus rally, went to a computer in the school library, set up the twitter account and posted vile, racist tweets. Then she used them to foment fear and anger toward imaginary racists.

I'm not posting her picture or using her name.   According to news reports, she has been receiving death threats.  This may be true, but like the boy who cried wolf, she has said this before.  She now is accused of a third-degree crime for creating a false alarm.

I feel sorry for her, actually.

In manufacturing a hatred that did not exist, she embarrassed herself and damaged the credibility of a sincere group she hoped to help.  It was a cheat.

We hear often now of people, mostly young, who project racism, homophobia or sexual predation on others, usually people unknown to them.  They make up cartoon pictures of imagined enemies and then claim the mantle of victimhood.

Why would anyone want to be a victim?  There is more satisfaction, not to mention self-respect, to be found in facing real enemies and exposing them for what they are.


Note

One thing I did find distressing was this reported quote from a campus meeting following the announcement that the racial threats were false:

      In response to other questions, (the) director of the African Studies Department called
      the threats a result of the fallout from the continuing racism in society.

      "It does not matter that it was a black person who did this. This was all in the context
      of racism," (he) said.

What is needed is a greater commitment to plain truth.  Nobody argues that our racial problems are behind us, but similarly, nobody should conflate fake, manufactured racism with white racial animus. 

We need to be better people here, all of us.


Update

A few hours after this repost, linguist John McWhorter published a more thoughtful take on l'affaire Smollet and its historical context in The Atlantic.

MovieMonday: Isn't It Romantic

This movie opens with the Roy Orbison rendition of "Pretty Woman," the song, while a little girl watches, "Pretty Woman," the film, on television.

The girl's mother advises her that the film -- a sweet thing about a handsome rich guy who falls in love with a really fun prostitute -- is not reality.

"There's no happy ending for people like us," says the mother, who disabuses her pudgy daughter of the fantasy that true love comes as easily in life as it does in a Richard Gere/Julia Roberts movie.

Then, 25 years later, we meet the daughter, Natalie (Rebel Wilson), all grown up and living in a dingy outer borough of New York.  Natalie is now an architect assigned to design the parking garage for a larger, glossier project.  In other words, yuck.

Natalie has absorbed her mother's cynicism, and she says so again and again and again until the viewer thinks, okay, we got the point.  When her good sport of a colleague, Josh (Adam DeVine,) suggests her life might be better if she were "a little more open," we glimpse the ending to come.

Then something surprising happens and Natalie finds herself in a new reality -- a rom-com New York where subway stations are bedecked with flowers, where everyone is nice and where a tall, buff billionaire named Blake (Liam Hemsworth) finds her "beguiling" and pursues her ardently.

This sets up most of the film, which apparently draws on various rom-com tropes -- Natalie gets a fancy apartment and great wardrobe, her drug-dealing neighbor becomes her flamboyant gay friend, she becomes a  star at the office while her wimpy work assistant has turned into a snarling professional enemy, and there are luxy parties and so forth.

Natalie is of course confused and suspicious, but things go on and on and on in the fairytale world until she has learned an Important Lesson that she can apply when life returns to normal.

The point of "Isn't It Romantic" seems to be to make fun of romantic comedy films by making a really, really exaggerated rom-com that lets the audience in on the joke.  It's possible there is a sub-genre of less over-the-top films like this ("Fifty Shades of Grey," maybe?) that I have not seen, but except for a few good gags the movie feels overlong even at an economical 86 minutes.

What little I know of Rebel Wilson makes me think she'd be better served if she were more discerning in her choice of scripts.

Alternatives

Either 2017's  The Big Sick is really, really good, or I just associated it with the happy aura of the time I saw it, on the same weekend as a family wedding.  I think both may be true.

A classic screwball comedy, "Bringing Up Baby" was directed by Howard Hawks and featured Cary Grant as a befuddled scientist and Katharine Hepburn as a wacky heiress with a pet leopard named, yes, Baby.  It was made in 1938 and had stood the test of time when I last saw it around the turn of the millennium.

MovieMonday: Cold Pursuit

This movie opens as all revenge movies do, with a good man (or woman) driven to the limit.

In this case, the man is Nels (Liam Neeson), who speaks little but drives a really really big snowplow through the Colorado mountains.  And he's modest:  "I'm just a guy who keeps a strip of civilization open," he says.  He also receives a citizen-of-the-year award from his town, a ski resort.

Then some bad guys -- drug dealers, natch -- bring a shipment to town on a private jet and, apparently without provocation, kill Nels' son, Kyle (Neeson's own son, actor Micheál Richardson) by injecting him to the point of overdose and dropping his body at an outdoor cafe in Denver.

Nels is gripped first by despair and then by rage.  He vows to take out every member of the drug gang, bottom to top, and makes a pretty good start on the project.

Then the plot veers off in other directions.  Turns out the Denver-based drug kingpin, a guy known as Viking (Tim Bateman), and his minions are fighting with a Native American drug gang for territory.   There's a long, not very credible story about how this animus arose, but it takes us to the point where Viking's thugs kill the son of White Bull (Tom Jackson), the Native American paterfamilias who wants Viking's son killed as revenge.

Viking, like Nels and White Bear, is a loving father.  He is also persnickety, taking time away from planning violent hits to order his estranged wife to feed their school-age child a very specific, very healthy diet.

Then it's off to the races or the snow plows or whatever.  The action shifts from Nels vs. Viking to team White Bear vs. team Viking.  If you can get past the gore of it all, it's pretty funny with amusing asides about a mismatched team of police officers,  the native enforcers playing at a white man's ski resort and Nels' brother's odd life and travails.

Call it a revenge movie, but with many exaggerated characters around the edges.   This seems intended to convince the audience that the whole thing is a big goof and not a Tarantino-esque shoot-em-up.

In fact, this film has been made before.  The earlier version was "In Order of Disappearance," a popular 2014 Norwegian movie, that, from the look of its trailer, included all the same plot points and included all the humorous distractions.  That film's director, Hans Petter Moland, directed this American version.

In short, the movie is wacky and worth a watch.  But I have one question.

If Liam Neeson's character spends his days and nights plowing furrows in mountains frosted with deep snow and attending funerals in icy cemeteries, why doesn't he wear gloves or a hat or at least zip up his parka?


Revenge Stories: A Brief and Selective History  

Stories where good people (or gods) seek revenge have been popular since at least the time of Homer, whose  "Iliad" and "Odyssey" are full of such themes.

This is not difficult to understand.   A boiling rage and the urge to act on it inspire writers and playwrights and musicians and actors.

Shakespeare's "Hamlet" is his most famous vengeance play.  Almost 400 years later, Disney released a more kid-friendly treatment of the same idea with "The Lion King."

Giuseppe Verdi composed three operas around the theme -- "Aida," "La Traviata," and "Rigoletto."  Georges Bizet gave us "Carmen."   There must be many others.

If children still read adventure books (a big if,) then "The Count of Monte Cristo" is still a popular title as well as the subject of three or four films.  There also are innumerable children's movies about teaching bullies their well-deserved lessons.

There are women's revenge movies, including "Carrie," "Nine to Five," and "Kill Bill."    There is a 70-year-old Bergman revenge film, "Virgin Spring," that still is studied in film classes.

Here in the US, the revenge film seems to have become the province of middle-aged actors who are cast as family men enraged by violence done to their wives and/or children.  Think Charles Bronson, Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Mel Gibson and, for the last decade or so, Liam Neeson.

A Homeless Anecdote

Last week, I went out for a haircut appointment.  It was a three-block walk in the pouring rain.  On the way I passed a homeless guy sitting in a wheelchair, his wheelie suitcase nearby, under the eave of a commercial building.

 When I walked home, the guy still was sitting there and the rain had calmed down a bit, but the weather was still wet and cold.  

I don't give money to homeless people anymore, but I try not to be a complete jerk. 

So I went into a liquor store and bought a pre-made turkey sandwich.  Then I went across the street to the library branch and located its entrance ramp.  I went inside the library and told a clerk I was going to bring a wet homeless guy in his wheelchair inside.  I said that I hoped there would be no objection if the poor guy quietly consumed his sandwich in the food-free zone.  She snarled a little, but finally  nodded.

Then I took the sandwich to the homeless guy and offered to push him to the library. No, he said, he wasn't wet and preferred to sit where he was.   Then he gave me his life story, including his extensive experiences with Buddhist groups and reincarnation, his disappointments with the local Catholic charities homeless program and his participation in film productions at the local universities, UCLA and USC.  Plus a lot more.

Maybe he needed to talk for 45 minutes, but I wanted to go home and put on some dry shoes.  Finally I bade him adieu and offered my best wishes.

Update

Today I walked to the Whole Foods store to buy dinner provisions.

On my way home, I passed the same same homeless man walking the other way.  He was pushing his wheelchair with his wheelie suitcase in it, and he was wearing the same pair of oddly decorated headphones he had been wearing when I gave him the sandwich.

He didn’t recognize me, which probably was just as well.


Sometimes I feel like a sucker.

MovieMonday: Shoplifters

Critics love this movie, but American moviegoers seem a bit put off by its title and the premise that poverty justifies stealing in order to survive.  In fact, "Shoplifters" tells the story of a loving family.

The movie opens as might be expected, with father Osamu (Lily Franky) and son Shota (Jyo Kairi) executing a well-practiced shoplifting expedition to gather food for the family dinner, which is shared in their tiny quarters (tiny even by Japanese standards) with Osamu's wife, a grandmother and her younger daughter.

Osamu's rationale is that the items on store shelves simply have not yet found homes.

In a similar way, when Osamu finds a little girl shivering outside in the cold, he takes her to his  home.  When it is established that the girl is unwanted and that she has been abused physically, the Shibatas rationalize that they have not kidnapped her -- no ransom request, after all -- and adopt her informally into their family.

The Shibatas work at low-paying jobs and live at the margins in a rich country but seem untroubled by this.  If they are poor, well, their family life is rich in love.  They treasure their children and treat the grandmother with great respect.

Hints are dropped for three-quarters of the movie.  A mother tells her daughter, "I chose you."  The daughter works as some kind of peep show attraction, offering comfort if not sex to lonely young men.  The grandmother visits an apparently unrelated middle-aged couple and expects them to give her money.

After about an hour and a half of halcyon domesticity, three events pull the edifice down, and the audience is left wondering about the meaning of family.

Critics see this movie as a critique of financial inequality in Japan, but my impression is that director Hirokazu Kore-eda is playing a longer game here.

In fact, Japanese family life is in decline.  The proportion of children to adults has slid for 37 years now, longer than in any other developed country.  More than 40 percent of adults under the age of 35 are virgins, and while most of them report that they plan to marry "someday," they also say their economic prospects are not good enough to do so yet.  The very traditional culture prizes job security but is generating more part-time or off-on jobs that render men as unsuitable marriage partners.  There is a curious trend of "maid cafes" where young men go to see young women dressed in housemaid costumes and acting deferentially -- like housemaids.  The increase in the elder population is being addressed by robots that provide nursing home care.

It may sound trite, but at its core, "Shoplifting" asserts that loyalty and family love are more essential than economic security.  That this needs saying is what is remarkable about the film.