I felt I needed a break after the GUI project in early July; after all, I couldn't bring myself to continue the work anymore on the chat server (designing and implementing WS-based heartbeat), and that's fine. The forced days are gone now. I look at longer-term pictures, and I know rushing isn't the point, not yet at least.
I needed a get-away, and to me personally, the most effortless and comfy escape has always been movies. For the record, over the years, the school days in particular, I saw the pattern of things that best decompressed me, say after an intense semester, and I dubbed it "soft porn movies", referring to three actually orthogonal things: software, porno, and movies, which includes TV shows. Now porno is quite ambient, thank you the web, and it is actually the least guilt-inducing among the trio, mostly because it is not that time-consuming; nowadays it has become mostly just visual-based, it's fast food, the good old days of reading nifty erotic fictions are gone, and there's rarely emotions involved... for all these reasons, I'm no longer much concerned with porn, even though the need for it does vary with the stress level somewhat.
Now about software, I truly solved it. From an addictive activity of just using/configuring software, which I imagine closely resembles that of playing video games (which I don't), it has become my main training, profession, and more importantly, passion, and as many people like to use the expression, I finally found my world, even though the journey had been a convoluted one. (But isn't it part of the thrill?)
So if porno feeds the id, and software directs the superego, then it seems that movies answer my need for the ego? Note that here ego just means the human mind, not specifically the "selfish" part. I've always been intrigued by conceptual models of trios, besides the Freudian one, I also tend to draw correspondence using the trio of the arts, the humanities, and the sciences. Indeed, I admit that porno is hardly a great representative of the arts, but it is as theoretically artistic as the higher forms such as music and painting: it is rooted in actual human desires, and some people strive to elevate it to something beyond animalistic stimulations. (I know, not all pornos are created equal, but the same applies to music.)
(Now speaking of music, I have a confession to make. I stopped listening to music quite some time ago, and I stopped playing the recorder, the only instrument I felt comfortable with, even long before that. I have no accurate record of the time, but it's post 2018 for certain, probably two or three years ago with the instrument, and it had to do with the criticism of the virtuoso mentality and lifestyle in Jean-Christophe. But I know the recess was not because I developed some kind of aversion to music. On the contrary, I think I have internalized my appreciation for the favorite pieces, such that it no longer has to be maintained via being regularly exposed to them physically. I used to feel deeply the magic of classical music in not only relaxing, but healing, and inspiring, but at the same time, it seems distasteful to utilize such wonderful art as a mere soothing agent in the background while minding your own business. Well, I might have overstated it a bit, but my point remains the same: great art is not only beautiful, but does good to people, and we should be grateful; However, after we have "crossed", we don't have to make it a robotic routine to keep experiencing it over and over again - it will be part of us, we're carrying the memes while living on.)
So where were we? OK, it seems that we're two down, one to go - movies is still unsolved. Now conceptually I'd like to consider movies as a special mechanism for storytelling in general, along with books. People often classify cinema and even literature as arts, with valid reasons (motion pictures are foremost visual after all, and so can be words), but to me, the "art" of storytelling is not for art's own sake at all: it is the necessary expression of mind that is the consequence of the introspective and imaginative nature of us humans; therefore, in a sense, it's not a field of craft like arts or sciences, but a meta field for everything and anything human, that's why storytelling is truly all-encompassing.
Now movies (or videos in general) vs. books is a big debate. The author of Amusing Ourselves to Death makes strong arguments against the former, and I'm yet to read the book, but intuitively, I feel that it's a human flaw, a misuse/abuse situation due to the current vulnerable reward model, instead of a law that videos are intrinsically a toxic medium to convey any stories about the human world.
I agree that videos are much easier to exploit, but it doesn't necessarily make it unworthy of human endeavors. At least we've got footages from genuine journalism, and solid documentaries that aim to record facts instead of pushing opinions. And I believe this channel of expression is just inevitable: before any visual-recording device was ever invented, primitive societies already started using humans as such recorders, think cave paintings. Humans by nature want to record and express, and they strive for ever more realistic and immersive techniques for such tasks. They came up with theatre long before acting could be recorded as motion pictures. Even words are devised over time to be ever more visually vivid and precise, or even enhanced beyond merely descriptive to impress or persuade more effectively, which is the art of rhetoric. So it's not like words are automatically honest while videos just lie and mislead. On the contrary, I think it's precisely because videos are more physically real (think video surveillance) than words that it is much easier to deceive people with it - a good lier must appear trustworthy.
But I guess I digress. After all, this piece isn't about those "serious" videos, but full-on industrial-strength entertainment products. Can there be anything good, I mean besides being entertained by them?
Great Entertainment Implies Rarity?
It's said that art originates from real life, yet transcends it one way or another. But more specifically, I think art is predominantly interested in things that are scarce, rare, or even no more. It is almost a law of economy, or psychology. There are exceptions to this I should say, because I do believe there is purely innate or intuitive love for things that are not a result of insufficient supply, although insufficiency would certainly intensify the longing. Van Gogh's love for sunflowers, for instance, was not because sunflowers were rare, and I think it is natural for humans to make an art out of things they just enjoy among the communities, you know, a cultural thing. Many forms of traditional fun can be had collectively. But there are just different levels of art, and just as there are different kinds of metals, the most valuable elements are typically the ones that are rare. Even Van Gogh strove to put his personal signature on sunflowers, not to trademark it for profit, but to make his works special and distinguished.
Although economics and psychology are never as precise and reliable as natural sciences, I think the general pattern has been clear and salient throughout time and space. We value more the things that are rare, and we tend to enjoy more such things. And a corollary would be, great entertainment comes from things we don't see a lot in reality, at least not any more. Would we be super psyched to watch a movie that depicts common events in the world, or what everybody is already doing every day? That simply wouldn't sell. Even the live stream views of SpaceX rocket launches have dropped significantly since the Falcon 9 booster landing became a solved problem (but the views on Starship and Crew Dragon are a different story).
And an extension of this reasoning is already quite a depressing one. The entertainment industry sells a lot of products in various art forms about romance and friendship, and other forms of social connections. Is it fair to claim that one major contributing factor of their business success is that such relationships and connections are rare in real life? Well, on the flip side, if this is the case, then the huge popularity of the action and horror genres seems more comforting, as real-life violence and evil spirits are not that pervasive in our world, at least not in the parts where people enjoy such movies. (Do real-life gangsters watch gangster movies? I don't know. Well I guess that also depends on how good the gangster movie is... But I know that it is fairly typical for people to tend to avoid movies that are "too close to home".)
Now if we take a different perspective, and even admit that great love or friendship is not commonplace (and we're not concerned with the definition of great), then we can appreciate the efforts of art/entertainment to highlight, preserve, and disseminate the rare qualities of human connections, and hopefully, such good memes will inspire more people as a result.
Therefore, on one hand, such art works are places, or virtual realities if you will, that we can escape into; on the other hand, there is a chance that we may walk out of the utopia with our mind changed for the better.
Not feeling right, not calm or patient enough to write an extended piece, but I do want to jot something down, so will be succinct.
Mike Flanagan
He's definitely among the good storytellers, great at portraying close relationships under inexorable hardships; the closeness, the warmth between people is like what we see in Joss Wedon's Buffy, or 14 by Peter Clines, but the suffering in Flanagan's works is much more tragic, after all, it's not meant for high schoolers or certain genre nerds. In a way, although the horror is still dramatically symbolized as evil spirits or vampires, the focus is never about the "creatures" per se, they are just techniques to paint the ambient force majeure that puts the people in certain broken state, and it's really all about these people, more specifically, how they react to pain, and interact with one another. Therefore, it is not really surprising that Flanagan never created any awesome villains (meaning those with complex backstories), which in this genre is a weakness, but for me, it is a good weakness, like an innate aversion to drugs. Consequently, Doctor Sleep could never match The Shining, not even close; in fact, it is by far the most disappointing work of Flanagan, and that's because the Shining horror was all about the notion that the dearest person could become the most dangerous and horrifying, whereas in Doctor Sleep, the villains are just a bunch of asshole strangers (some witch-vamp mashup). The same goes for the villains of Midnight Mass, the creature is mostly impersonal, and the church-CEO lady was just an ordinary greedball with ample aggression.
But Midnight Mass is one of my favorite Flanagan works. Again, I don't mind the weak villains, actually I appreciate this defect of his. It shows that he doesn't feel super psyched about designing a high-end set of creatures and bosses so that the show sells. Frankly I like cool creatures as well, but at the same time, I believe horror can do so much more than merely offering novelty-based excitement.
True, Midnight Mass is solid in the big questions about death, ethics, and faith, heck, the wonderful conversation between Erin and Riley on the death experience, which is masterfully cut into two distant but well-coupled scenes, is both a well-informed imagination based on neural science, and a poetic interpretation of the nature of physical existence in relation to our consciousness. But none of this would work if the characters weren't fully developed to the extent that we love and care about them. Art is great at conveying messages and philosophy in general, but only if it manages to be great art in the first place. Otherwise, it will backfire and make a fool out of itself.
A sidenote: I find Midnight Mass to be highly "isomorphic", for lack of a better term, to the 2015 film The Invitation. The topographical and semantic correspondence between the two was quite shocking, right up to the point that there both was a lockdown by the henchman of the evil to prevent the victims from escaping. However, the "doctor" (Dr. Joseph) in The Invitation was dead evil, while Father Paul in Midnight Mass I believe was not, he majorly fucked up in the desperate pursuit of a tangible demonstration of "miracles". (Yeah, I thought The Invitation was a Flanagan film for a while.)
Another proof that Flanagan is not just a regular horror guy is the 2017 film The Gerald's Game. It is a Stephen King story, not his, but his choosing to make the film on domestic sexual abuse is a strong message that it's not really just the supernatural evil that drives him into the genre, but he believes that it is a strong and effective medium to convey those tragic stories that can bring to public attention various real hardships that people are severely victimized by or dealing with continuously.
In this regard, Flanagan did a better job than Joss Wedon with his Buffy, honestly, Buffy was to me mostly about romance and heroism, but not so much about sufferings, and for this reason, I agree with many fans that Wedon's Angel did a better job portraying deeper struggles with life. But then we've got all the Kongfu actions that only caused actors' injuries but nobody remembered the show by. Could be that Wedon was just a fan... heck, he did all those Chinese lines in Firefly (which was sometimes a challenge for me to figure out, but cute).
Bridget Fonda
She's charming, and definitely not because of being royalty (it might add to the charm if that's your thing), and she's cool about it. From what I can see, she never starred in any vastly high-profile film (Jackie Brown was the first one I saw her in, but she played a supporting role). But she's lovely, and I enjoyed most of the films in which she played a role, starring or otherwise. Gorgeous in Single White Female, and Point of No Return, a solid performance in the great A Simple Plan, and a total arthouse in Bodies, Rest & Motion. And even when playing bimbo roles, for lack of a better term, she's actually cool (Doc Hollywood, Shag, cameo in Drop Dead Fred, and well, Jackie Brown too, I guess). But within my impression, there's one Bridget Fonda movie that stood out the most: Lake Placid.
It's a lame story, esp. by today's standard. By that I mean, it is extremely easy to take that story and make a crappy film out of it, esp. nowadays. A creature film, a giant croc. But it is a lovely film nonetheless! It brought me immense joy, well-written lines that are funny but actually sensible, no boring characters, and more importantly, no buffoons (the eccentric adventurer, the grumpy sheriff, and the old wild lady, none of them was a clown-like stereotype, which is surprisingly rare today - because it's hard to write comedic characters without making each of them a joke), and no cheesy sexual tensions... everybody is likable, to some varying degree of course, and the final stunt of trapping the croc with a chopper was a good surprise, and surprisingly satisfying. But above all, Bridget Fonda made the film alive, the same kind of magic of Audrey Hepburn that made Roman Holiday alive, although we know the two films are in vastly different leagues of fame. But in a sense, fame doesn't mean that much in art or entertainment, the same even goes for food, something you find delicious doesn't need to be well-known.
As said before, if the same plot went into a film of this age, most likely a lame bore would come out, both in terms of writing and acting. In this sense, we're seeing a degradation of art as a function of time, a trend similar to what I've seen in music composition. On the other hand, this can be understood to some extent; in art, repetition or emulation is looked down upon, so if an idea has been done previously, even over and over, then no writer, actor, or director will be willing to pour their heart and soul into the production of such a used idea, hence the crappy result. Perhaps just like any field of creativity, when good ideas are exhausted over time, especially after an explosion of good ideas (the golden age), the less often new good ideas will come out afterwards. Classical music, Tang dynasty poetry, we see the trend. But with the latter two, part of the fall was due to diminished technical training, and I think that's not the case for film making. Perhaps the discrepancy lies in the much heavier entertainment component in the nature of the movie industry (and that's why they even find it useful to coin the term art house). All artists need to please the audience to some extent, but if that becomes the dominating motivation, then the art will inevitably deteriorate to pulp or even smut. Put it another way, if one day AI becomes fully capable of film making, and we optimize for sales only, which roughly translates to maximal entertainment power, then will it produce works of high artistic value, or even of lasting entertainment value over a long period of time?
Deep Impact vs Armageddon
Interestingly, these two films of the same basic idea, released in the same year of 1998, left me with distinct impressions. Armageddon I believe is significantly more popular, rated on IMDb 6.7 by 423K users, as opposed to 6.2 by 178K users for Deep Impact. I watched Armageddon long time ago, and could only remember that it was epic action, maybe even bat-shit crazy but in a good way, etc. On the other hand, I just watched Deep Impact on 7/27, and it was to me resembling an actual epic, I was deeply moved by the multitude of heroic acts of people in various roles of the story, the astronauts, the journalist, the young couple, and so on. Despite the rating scores, of which I certain frown upon but also understand, IMDb did at least one thing right: Deep Impact is labeled with the "Drama" genre, but Armageddon is not (it's pure "Action", "Adventure", and "Sci-Fi"). Right on.
This could be a long essay on the comparison, but ultimately, Deep Impact felt really real, while Armageddon didn't. And to me that makes all the difference. Whether a work of art is made sufficiently convincing or not is one of the basic criteria of true art.
Phoebe Cates
She is a sex symbol, right? I heard about Fast Times at Ridgemont High long ago, but never got the chance to see it until now (7/16). In spite of the brief but fantastic nude scene, it is actually not the de facto movie, graphic-wise, it's actually Private School, which as a story is totally useless by the way (and story wasn't the point obviously). And that's why people remember Ridgemont instead; after all, we're not simply admiring porn stars here. Humans actually remember good stories better than some visual fantasy. Indeed, Cates moved away from such a role cast quickly. Drop Dead Fred, among her films before 1994, is I think a lovely piece. I'm yet to see Princess Caraboo.
A curious observation: I had some uncertain impression before, that IMDb plot outlines were sometimes completely bogus, but could never be sure because I never bothered to check again after watching a movie. However, after watching Baby Sister (1983), I finally confirmed my long-time suspicion. I got you, IMDb.
Here's the plot outline currently showing:
Immature dropout Annie concocts a scheme to get her older sister's live-in boyfriend to date her instead.
But that's simply not what the movie was about. I know this is NOT a slander or false accusation against a real person, but I still felt outraged. Who wrote that and why? Was it because the guy never watched the actual movie, or he/she misled on purpose, maybe because it sounded more scandalous, hence a better watch-bait?
I've submitted a new version (8/4), but the review process seems so mysterious that nothing is happening by far. Anyway, for the record, my outline below:
After dropping out of school, Annie visits her elder sister, who lives with her boyfriend, David. David fells in love with Annie while working together at his clinic, and soon an affair develops.
The affair did happen, and the feeling was mutual, but it was not a scheme by Annie. In fact, David was the initiator with the first kiss.