LOU O' BEDLAM

Battleship (2012)

I went in (drunk) expecting a silly movie with explosions.

I came out with a belly full of rage. 

This feels like a movie written by executives and PR folk.  ”Make sure you put this in there, and make sure there’s this other thing that’s good for the boys in Marketing!”

I’ll say this: Director Peter Berg? Bravo for doing such a splendid job copying Transformers.  I didn’t think anyone could make as awful a movie in quite the same way, but you nailed it!

And I like Peter Berg.  I love Very Bad Things, Friday Night Lights, his short-lived tv show Wonderland.  Hell, even the Rundown was a treat. Kingdom? Decent, surprisingly decent!

But this? This is why people hate summer blockbusters.  This is everything movie critics complain about. Hell this is what movie audiences complain about.  There’s no soul to this movie.  It’s a bunch of bland actors (and Rhianna) running around tossing worthless dialogue in-between well-rendered explosions.  

They even went and got a stock blonde supermodel for the Love Interest.  Let’s put it this way: the guy they hired to just have no legs and be miserable? The guy who delivers his lines like he fails Voight Kampff tests for fun? That guy did a better job than the Love Interest. 

But let’s go deeper.  From the Wikipedia entry:

Some elements from the Battleship board game were integrated into the film:

• The alien ships’ missiles are shaped like the pegs from the board game and “sink” into the ship.
• The alien force field corresponds to the barrier between the sides of the board version of the game.
• The buoys form a grid similar to the board game’s layout.
• The sailors use the hit or miss guessing method from the game.
• The aliens have five ships to start with, just like the game.

Such attention to detail! Such attention to everything but making a good film by writing an interesting script and filling the movie with characters worth giving a fuck about. 

Don’t get me started on their use of Naval veterans.  Despicable.  

This movie is despicable.  This movie is created solely to make money.  Not to entertain, or enlighten, not to educate or even distract.  This is a giant business deal given celluloid flesh.  A golem, with Hebrew writing on its forehead that roughly translates as “MAKE MONEY MACHINE”. 

So, yeah, don’t see it, is what I’m saying.  Please.  SHOW THEM WE WILL NOT BE FOOLED. DO NOT LET MY TIME SACRIFICE BE IN VAIN.  

Though…I DO want to play Battleship, now.  Oh…OH, OH YOU BASTARDS.

Bill Murray & Wes Anderson (at Cannes) by Andrew H. Walker(Getty Images)

What we have here are two different, excellent uses of fame. 

Wes: I have achieved success and acclaim! I can wear expensive suits! 

Bill: I have achieved success and acclaim.  I CAN WEAR WHATEVER I WANT. I CAN HOLD HANDS WITH MY DIRECTOR. I CAN SHOW AFFECTION AND/OR SCORN AS I SEE FIT.  I AM BEYOND THAT WHICH CONCERNS THE REST OF YOU, THAT WHICH PLAGUES YOUR DREAMS AND CONSUMES YOUR EVERY WAKING HOUR.  TIME IS BUT A WINDOW. DEATH IS BUT A DOOR. 

BILL MURRAY IS.

I actually exclaimed “oh shit” when I saw this link a few minutes ago.

This is now my favorite thing on the internet, because it addresses something that’s been rattling around in my thoughts for months.  

How do we regain focus while surfing the web, how do we create a situation where we’re not inundated by more and more and more Stuff.  Always new posts, always scrolling, clicking, always on to the next. 

I read in Wired about the End of the Web some months back, how apps were taking over.  Sounded like balderdash. 

But now…I don’t know if I believe it, but I like it.  I like going to a place and seeing a thing.  Not a cascading waterfall of things that never ends, that asks me to look at something and then another something and then another something, whittling away at my concentration, at the time I spend with any one thing.  

I want to look at one photo at a time, influenced not at all by the one above or the one below.

I want to read a single article without being distracted by something an algorithm think I might also enjoy.  

I want the entire internet to operate in Zen Mode. 

Bravo, Nieman Labs.  

Walking backwards while she’s skating forwards.  Refocusing again and again as she’s closing the distance between us.  Having a conversation.  Trying not to be blinded by the sun behind her.  Stepping carefully, so as not to trip.  Missing my cameras that are currently in a small repair shop in Santa Monica (where they are being returned to their former glory), because I am seeing the shots I could take with them, and rue those shots that shall never exist. Radiating awareness of any movement behind me, hoping I can fake radar sense well enough to not get hit by a car coming around the corner.  Watching for any patches of sun on her face, at which point I’ll stop taking shots long enough for the light to move again.  

Neither of us are completely comfortable in the streets, it’s a gated neighborhood but I’ve never been there before and she’s rarely made such a spectacle of herself in and around her home.  It creates a vague unease that makes of us co-conspirators. Makes things more fun for being awkward.  Scared of freaking out the norms.  

Enjoying freaking out the norms.  

Which is to say, there’s enough going on.  There’s no sense of treading old ground, no feeling that I’m taking the same shots of Jenny I’ve taken before.  We’ve sidestepped that danger by both of us stepping just far enough away from our comfort zones.  I get too settled in a shoot, I get lazy.  But here there’s enough balls being juggled, keeps me focused, keeps me engaged, keeps me having a damn fine time.