Cinematic Word Abuse

Hollywood, we've talked about this. Stop it. Just make up your own words when you need some hocus-pocus to happen. Don't steal our real words and abuse them.

It's bad enough in police mystery shows. "Encrypted pixels" and stuff. Don't use or combine words that you don't understand. It's bad writing, and the resulting scenes are bad. But now, there's a film whose very title is wrong.

"The Source Code", the generic deep voice says, after the entire plot is shown in a 30-second TV spot.

I've glimpsed plenty of ads for this movie, which only means it could be anywhere from six months before the theatrical release to sitting in the DVD bargain bin at the grocery store. But "The Source Code", which is English for human-readable instructions for a computer, written in C or Python or Java or whatnot, here means "some magical means of time travel". Do me a favor, while you're in your web browser. Hit "View"->"Page Source" to open the source code for this page; there's some JavaScript near the bottom. See if you go hurtling back in time. Did it work? No? Hm.

See, instead of "modern day vampires = $$$", the lesson that should have been learned from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is this: Set the show up on a hellmouth, or some other place where magic and demons and impossible-but-fun nonsense is real. Don't say the computer is magic. It's not. While we're at it, no more loser-in-a-tree vampires either, 'kay?

But back to my point, don't hijack real words and phrases! Source code is very important and useful for many reasons, but time travel is not among them! I'll even go one step further and try to be constructive. Call it the Ghost Minutes Spell, or the Past Injection Curse. If you really want to have computers involved, stick it in a Matrix-like setting and call it the Crisis Backtrace or the ... actually, I can't come up with any computer words other than "backtrace" that even vaguely could have something to do with time travel.

But who am I to tell Hollywood producers anything, huh? I've only been writing source code since I was six. ...And, come to think of it, I also wrote two terrible movies, complete with crappy (though not outright lying) titles. At least I had the decency to not be able to finish shooting the second one. ;^)

The following film has been ruined.

I despise all forms of censorship, which leaks into the greyer area of movies getting butchered. Usually this is seen when a television network wants to show a movie, but doesn't want to show anything that might upset anybody. Well, that and they have to stop it every few minutes to let the advertisers scream at you. Anyway, there are other places this happens. "Family-friendly" video rental shops and other small businesses will sell or exchange for censored versions of movies. It's just been ruled that such businesses are infringing copyright:
http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/07/09/film-scrubbing-ruling.html

...I'm not sure how I feel about that. Sure, a little part of me dies when I see television butcher a movie by cutting off the sides of the picture, dubbing horribly cheesy dialogue over four-letter words, and skipping over intense scenes altogether. I think it does the filmmaker a disservice. But I'll bet that that same filmmaker either agreed to or signed off permission to a studio for the contract that let that movie be shown in a butchered format. Plus, it's generally understood that if I want to see the real deal, I can go buy a DVD or order pay-per-view or something. Now, these "family-friendly" rental outfits and other small businesses wear it on their sleeves that they are peddling modified movies. I personally would never set foot in such a place. But the guy who has a van full of kids to keep entertained on a long trip, or a practicing Mormon who never watches R-rated movies, might see these places much more positively. Butchered Matrix is better than no Matrix at all. ...Was that even R-rated...? Well you get my point.

Part of the problem is that society is full of prudes. This wouldn't even be an issue if there wasn't a sizeable part of the population who decides to get offended by certain words and images, who thinks anything sexual or violent is inappropriate, who picks at the details but misses the bigger picture of context and the notion that some stories simply deal with heavy subject matter. Another part is that many Hollywood studios toss in language and gore where really it isn't accomplishing anything. And then there's the problem that big media corporations want to have total control over how we see anything that comes out of their studios. Hence DVD encryption, unskippable previews, and the whole ridiculous ongoing fiasco around high-definition formats. If I honestly want to watch a butchered movie, I think I should be able to do so. Especially if I've paid just as much as I would for the real thing.

This particular ruling is sort of the worst of both worlds. If we bring the idea to its logical conclusion, there will be no more pan-and-scan and/or butchered-for-tv versions of movies, which would be fine by me, but we'll also be in a world where parody and other fair-use stuff is completely thrown out the window, which is absolutely not fine.

Preserving an artist's vision, hooray to that. But a giant boo to the idea of big film studios working with the government to restrict what we do with our own stuff. Here's hoping this judgement gets overruled, because it's totally wrong, even if it was made for the right reasons.

Cinerepetition

I love movies. I'm even happy to pay bloated prices for tickets, sugarwater, and popped vegetables, only to buy the special-edition, extra-profit director's cut when it is released on DVD later. But some trends in big-studio filmmaking just leave me shaking my head.

Why, for example, do we need not one awful Hot-girl-beats-people-up-in-a-futuristic-setting movie, but a whole bunch of them in a row? (To be fair, I've seen only previews, but they all look genuinely awful) Why were there several A-meteor-is-going-to-hit-earth movies released within chronological spitting distance of each other? How about all the Guy-seeks-to-deflower-the-girl-but-they-fall-in-love movies that came out over the course of a summer? And lately, it's been a wave of Cute-computer-animated-animals-share-heart-warming-fart-jokes films.

I don't mean to just pick on stupid movies either. I'm all for stupid movies. Adam Sandler generally plays the same sweet-but-troubled guy every single time, but God help me, I continue to find 50 First Happy Waterboy Daddy Singer Deeds funny, time and time again. I make no claim that all cinematic repetition is bad.
You can do it!

But when the pitch for a two-hour movie is something like "this redneck guy acts obnoxious" or "bratty kids laugh as their dad is on the receiving end of pies and other standard-issue slapstick" or "it's been a while since Titanic, let's do another sinking-ship, tragic-romance picture", I just have to wonder what exactly causes these projects to get the green light.

The content of so many films isn't even the whole story. Now they're even packaged in an obnoxious way. The thoughts running through film executives' heads has to go something like this: "Keep the exhorbanant ticket and snack prices, but now show twenty minutes of loud, extended television commercials to anyone who dares care enough about the movie to want to get there early and find good seats. Not only that, but talk down to them about how illegal it is to copy movies." Know what? If we're still coming to the theatre, even though the DVD will be out next week and we'll be able to not have noisy kids and cell phones around us while we watch... If we're still coming to the theatre, when it's ridiculously easy to download a fairly high-quality version of the movie before it even opens... If we're still coming to the theatre, how about showing some appreciation? Respect, even? A blaring, two-minute Coca-cola ad? This theatre doesn't sell Pepsi. If I'm thirsty, Coke's already got my money.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to see Scary Movie 4.