If a tree falls in the forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make a quantifiable impact on its market demographic?

Posted on October 16, 2011 by Scott King

Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was only playing at one cinema in Sussex – the Brighton Cineworld – and I gave myself 15 minutes to get to there, about 3 miles from the center of town. The Brighton Cineworld, besides being stinky (this is not a metaphorical odor, theater 3 is like a tenderloin porn house. You’re too young: people used to go to theaters to watch pornography for sexual gratification. Now they just have healthy sex with partners they really want to be with and are happy all the time), is located in a bizarre netherworld of dead stores and 5 italian restaurants, with an onramp, and I’m not kidding, that requires you to take a U-turn in the middle of a busy street. This was not an oversight, or something that they were supposed to fix and just haven’t got to yet. A massive series of concrete roads and tunnels was built and designed at the time of its construction, specifically for people who drive. They just forgot to make accessible to cars. To its credit, there’s a lot of parking.

I had not (or rather my GPS system, which is convinced that the speed limit through a busy urban center planned by people who put U-turns in front of onramps averages 20 mph, had not) anticipated the Saturday traffic jam in front of Churchill Square. Ah, right. Not from Brighton. Churchill Square is a mall, also built in the 1980s, but this time in the middle of the city so that’s easy to get to if you don’t have a car. People naturally take this as their cue to drive there, making the line to get into the parking lot on a weekend about 30-60 minutes long. This means that any form of transportation, inclusive of, but not restricted to walkers, amputee carts and scorpion chariots, would mean less time and expense than driving. To its credit, the ramp actually does lead into the parking lot. So when I tell you I usually take my bike (it was in the shop), it’s not me waving the green flag, or planting it in your chest. I hate the environment. All the environment has ever done is provide life support for people who want to destroy it. So when I ride my bike, it’s not for the environment; it’s for the pleasure. The pleasure it gives me in judging how stupid you are.

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Close your aperture and think of England

Posted on October 7, 2011 by Scott King

In 1946, some idiot named Mr. Roberto Rossellini made a film called Rome, Open City, thinking that showing real life was a great way to save money. The critics, unsurprisingly, agreed. Two years later, another idiot called Mr. Hans Morganthau wrote a book about how it was basically okay for states to do whatever they wanted, since this behavior would somehow balance itself out. States, unsurprisingly, agreed. In an inspired rhetorical coup, both movements took the title of ‘Realism’, thinking, very correctly, that no matter how dull the subject matter or inane the explanation, the name itself was a really good way to win arguments. You’re a Marxist? That’s nice, but I’m a realist. You make films with well constructed characters, dialog and theme? Well, I’m a realist. You’re a member of the The Official Monster Raving Loony Party? Well, that’s actually pretty great. You win. But realism is totally second place.

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The Sum of Its Bits

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Scott King

I’ve been doing internet dating lately, and I’ve found, through repeated rolls of eyes and various ‘Oh my God. Look at the laundromat over there, how long has that been there? Isn’t it interesting how things…exist in space!’, that there is nothing – nothing except for one thing – more boring than talking about internet dating. Nevertheless, we are here to talk about the Mr. Ryan Gosling Œuvre and the happy coincedence that both Drive and Crazy, Stupid, Love came out in the same week in the distributor unfriendly UK. Strangely the orphan of the English speaking world (every other country in the world has seen Midnight in Paris except the one where the language originated), films come out here in the most ad hoc way imaginable link. I think it has something to do with the metric system. Lucky me, we won’t get Thor 2 until 2013. Unlucky me, Thor 3 will come out the same day. I won’t be able to understand a bit of it, since the original comes out in 2023, just in time for the actual Thor to revisit the earth and set all the movie schedules right again. But you know I was just lulling you into a false sense of irony, and at any moment I’m going to talk about how films starring Ryan Gosling are somehow very much like my meeting strangers for drinks and trying to figure out if I’m uncomfortable or extremely uncomfortable. Don’t want to talk about internet dating? Fine, I’m on this diet right now…

I thought that might shut you up. Continue reading →

Ten Great Movies That Ruined Cinema Forever, Minus Six, But I’m Really Only To Talk About One. Tangentally.

Posted on September 6, 2011 by Scott King

Don’t you love (and read) lists? There they are, just to be wrong and get all worked up about. If we see movies to get anxious and get relieved (it’s like massage, only dirty), we buy newspapers and read blogs so we can get angry and foam about how wrong they are (as opposed to say, the occasional reporting of an actual event. Sorry, including the occasional reporting of an actual event), only to feel relieved at the end at our righteousosity. When they contradict us, facts are dangerous enough, but opinions, well…those are serious.

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The No-Rule Rule

Posted on September 3, 2011 by Scott King

Let’s say I wanted you to see a movie, in this case, a funny film called The Guard. I could spoil the jokes, but would that really you to get off your couch, or, alternatively, to get you to slightly move your cursor and download it (‘but the icon’s is all the way on the other side of the screen!’)? No, spoiling the jokes will just make you sit there and think that you’ve already seen it, so to motivate you to get up I’m going to spoil joking in general. Since there’s nothing less funny than talking about what’s funny, you’ll be compelled to do anything but continue reading, and this includes seeing the film. The fact that this relieves me of the duty to think of anything clever to say never occurred to me. Here my success is defined like that of truly great philosopher (which I also am, by the way, not a philosopher, a truly great philosopher). If you’ve got something new and challenging for the ages, you will be ignored in your own time. The fact the same reaction will be visited upon you if you are terrible or just mediocre should not deter you in any way; it doesn’t deter me. The one thing you don’t want is to be loved in your own time. Success, as a truly great philosopher might say, is for losers.

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Fifteen producers, seven writers, four companies, and one genre.

Posted on August 25, 2011 by Scott King

It is a strange phenomenon indeed that we pay our hard earned money to cinemas to make us tense for a few hours, only to relieve that tension. The explanation for this is like buying a lottery ticket; there’s a chance, however slim that may be in this year of 2011, that the relief will stay with you for a while, that it will resonate in the form of mood, sort of like a drug that makes you feel like crap, but with a fantastic hangover. When I walked out of Beginners, for example, I was cheerful, and the mood stayed with me. Hello, inexplicable traffic jam! Thank you for giving me time to consider how wonderful my life is! And thank you for slowing me down: you can’t be too careful these days! But it’s not entirely like a lottery either, because when you pick and scratch, the worst case scenario is nothing. If you lose, no one reaches across the counter and hits you in the face. Even so, such a scenario would be infinitely preferable to the psychic equivalent of having seen Cowboys and Aliens, the worst film so far in the worst year so far (and that includes Green Hornet, the parts I was awake for that is). Walking out, I wanted to kill everyone. All right, fine, more than usual. Get out my way, crippled orphan! I don’t actually need to be anywhere right now, but I need to be there right now. Oh now you want to hold the door open for me? How dare you?

Suddenly I was in that frame of mind where everything in the world is someone else’s fault. Reflecting upon it, as I bum-rushed an old lady to catch the train, I thought about the combination of the deeply unsympathetic characters and a line that recurs twice: ‘It’s not your fault’. This was anathema to me: it was your fault (the crazy one talking out loud at your cinema, that’s me, by the way). You’re an asshole. You acted like an asshole, and something bad happened. And, having no idea if this applies to the characters, the filmmakers or both, I plunged forward. You want to be psychoanalyzed? Then we’re going to delve into that guilt, or more specifically, the idea that you don’t deserve it. My diagnosis? This is a film is made by, and so about, and is somehow turning me into one of a growing number of sociopaths. That may seem like a personal attack – to say that you lack the capacity to feel compassion for others, see yourself as the center of the universe and yet remain miraculously free of responsibility for your own actions – but my interest is purely therapeutic. The label ‘sociopath’ is not meant to hurt your feelings; it’s meant to hurt your feelings the way a therapist would. Continue reading →

Method Directing

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Scott King

Given the state of trailers today, and the fact that there are 15 minutes of commercials in UK cinemas before the trailers, going to the movies and avoiding the dreaded Orange ad is a tactical affair of that requires more time and energy than, well, sitting through trailers and commercials in the first place. Given the genuinely lousy state of films in 2011, however, this elaborate stress dance is the only way left to actually squeeze any real tension from the filmgoing experience. Today, I was seeing Super 8, not to enjoy it, no, but to write about it here, and so I was especially irked when I arrived at my scientifically-and-statistically-determined-after-years-of-research-17-and-half-minutes-late to find a blank screen. Not even the commercials had started. It was disappointing indeed to have to wait even longer to be disappointed. Continue reading →

Why I hate Nazis

Posted on August 17, 2011 by Scott King

If you were to read my notes from Elle s’appellait Sarah (and I should have known: the actual title in French She was called Sarah, which became the in every way equally bland and unappealing Sarah’s Key – changing the title of the film: never a good sign, see here), you would see ‘phony, phony, phony’, written over and over again. At the twentieth time, I invented, and then abandoned, a complex mathematics to express the exponentially growing fake-osity, which I would use if for nothing else than to reduce the hand strain. But it was dark, and so I just underlined it, and wrote it REALLY BIG, thinking no doubt thinking that the filmmakers, monitoring my every move from space, would be able to read it via satellite surveillance. Yes, I’m aware it makes no sense but it’s a great deal more likely than what I actually believe: that they’re going to read this and change the way they make movies. Continue reading →

Risk Management Seminar

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Scott King

Once upon a time, I tried to make a movie about kid’s show host named Dr. Scientist who would explain How Wars Work. It was great, because 1) it never got finished, so I never had to prove that it was, and 2) I played Dr. Scientist. I remember there was a scene that took place in Amoeba Records between fans of Alicia Keys and Jets from Brazil (it was 2005, when these bands existed and people bought records) who went to war with one another over their taste in music. The point being that things that we like inexplicably provoke often extreme reactions in the negative, as if the existence of Dave Matthews and anyone who likes him means that the music you like is just music you like, instead of the greatest music ever recorded. How could something that makes you so happy not be true? Dr. Scientist was trying explain religious wars from this perspective, and though he effectively solved the Pakistani/India conflicts, ended the war on Terror, and managed to unite North and South Korea, he was still unable to explain the existence of Dave Matthews, who is just terrible, and invalidates all the music I like.

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I wrote this in ten seconds, for 4¢.

Posted on July 24, 2011 by Scott King

Hello, my name is Luciana.In the future, I will love Bradley Cooper, and not know why.

There he is. Shape!

You may be wondering why, aside from Mr. Cooper’s well-defined abdominal muscles, effortless good looks, natural charisma, and dreamy blue eyes that is.Well, I’m not supposed to watch TV, at least according to studies that will be totally contradicted in twenty years, and then resurrected as brand new in forty.As such, the UK has organized (sorry, organised) ‘Big Scream’ screenings where we (and, to a much lesser extent, our mothers; apparently no daddies take advantage of this) can see movies and the babies can scream and poop and get changed and do baby things without getting looks and maybe even a severe tut-tut from a disapproving audience member.Scott felt that the noise level was meager competition for the title readers and drunken plot advisers that attended the Friday matinées at the Hollywood Galaxy 6 (RIP).That’s a place babies would go to get a chance to tell someone else to be quiet for once.

For the uninitiated, these are not children’s films (last week was Bridesmaids, which was apparently packed), but normal, perhaps even deliberately adult films where you can blow stuff up, swear and show boobies.This is fine for babies, since I won’t develop shame over any of these things for years.As Bradley Cooper is going to be one of the very first images implanted in my brain, I would like the producers of Limitless for not casting Shia LaBœuf; I’ll just leave liking Mr. LaBœuf and not knowing why to Steven Spielberg. Continue reading →