YouTube Goes Highbrow

During the L.A. Film Festival this year, I was first introduced to the Youtube Screening Room, an area of the site devoted exclusively to selected independent films. The Screening Room will feature four short films every two weeks, as well as the occasional full-length feature. Right now the four featured films include Miguel Arteta’s hilarious short, Are You the Favorite Person of Anyone? (starring Miranda July, John C. Reilly, and Mike White), Oscar-winner The Danish Poet (2007 best animated short), Oscar nominee Our Time is Up (starring a fantastic Kevin Pollack), and Love and War (“the world’s first animated opera”). I recommend viewing them all.

This new YouTube venture is terribly exciting, and has the potential to revolutionize the regretfully ghettoized short film form. Previously, short films have been largely relegated to life on the festival circuit, but with the Internet (and especially something like YouTube Screening Room), perhaps the short film will enjoy a popular renaissance.

More importantly, this will further democratize (possibly) the entry points to the film industry. Intrepid young filmmakers who score a featured spot on the site (and user-submitted videos will in fact be a part of it) and garner a million or so views will likely become attractive properties for bigger and better things in Hollywood. The Screening Room also provides a potential moneymaking venture for erstwhile unemployed aspiring filmmakers. Videos on the site will be eligible for YouTube's revenue-sharing program, whereby filmmakers split some of the income from the advertising that accompanies their movies.

Finally, I think that if this is a successful venture, it indicates that the future of all art cinema will in the not-too-distant future be distributed first and foremost on the Internet. Blockbusters and event movies will always (well, for a while at least) be outside-the-home experiences, but art films will increasingly be seen via Netflix, HDNet, or the Internet. After all, not every city is like L.A.: most people in the world don’t have film festivals and 12-screen arthouse multiplexes to go to if they want to see obscure films.

Did God Use Constantine?

It has become fashionable of late for progressive-minded Christians to distance themselves from Constantine. Constantine, if you recall, was the Roman Emperor who in the fourth century first adopted Christianity (which had been criminalized under his predecessor, Diocletian) and made it the empire’s official religion. In a short time, Christianity was transformed from a marginal “rebel” religion that was constantly persecuted to a state-sanctioned, protected entity that became fused with the governing authorities. It was at this moment that the church-state relationship was born. It was the first time when Christians wielded power in the culture, and they would never again relinquish it.

Today, however, many Christians are seeking to shed the Constantinian cloak of power once and for all. After the Crusades, slavery, imperialism, and other such bad side effects of institutionalized, power-wielding Christianity, many Christians are hoping to return to a place of humility rather than power, quiet love rather than public force.

The recent Evangelical Manifesto, for example, has an entire section called “The way of Jesus, not Constantine,” in which the writers firmly situate their hope for evangelicalism outside the state-sanctioned, power-wielding tradition of Rome:

“We utterly deplore the dangerous alliance between church and state, and the oppression that was its dark fruit. We Evangelicals trace our heritage, not to Constantine, but to the very different stance of Jesus of Nazareth. While some of us are pacifists and others are advocates of just war, we all believe that Jesus’ Good News of justice for the whole world was promoted, not by a conqueror’s power and sword, but by a suffering servant emptied of power and ready to die for the ends he came to achieve.”

The thought here is that Christianity was never meant to be a powerful political force, and certainly not a violent one. It is often pointed out that Christianity thrives the most when it is underground and persecuted by culture, not when it runs the culture. Look at the world today: Christianity is on fire in places like China (where it is outlawed), while it is dying out in places like the U.S. and especially Europe, where it institutionalized and entrenched and, well, easy.

Is Christianity better as an underdog? Kierkegaard certainly thought so. In his Training in Christianity writings, the fiery Danish philosopher (a radical Protestant) argues that Christianity has been “done away with” by Christendom—“for it has become an easy thing, a superficial something that neither wounds nor heals profoundly enough.” He writes that Christendom has popularized Christianity and garnered many followers (because “people are only too eager to take part when there is nothing whatever to do but to triumph and join the parade”), but has lost the essential qualities of what he called “contemporaneousness with Christ.” For Kierkegaard, true Christianity requires a suffering and experience of offense that clearly separates followers of Christ (the Suffering Servant) from worldly pursuits. In established Christendom, he writes, “one becomes a Christian in the merriest possible way, without in the least becoming aware of the possibility of the offense.”

Clearly there is precedent for faulting Constantine (and the development of Christendom) for the failures of the church today. And I admit to sympathizing with these thoughts quite a bit. I do think that Christianity is better fit as an underdog movement rather than top dog institution, but part of me wonders: was Constantine really that bad for Christianity? Might he have been used by God—purposefully—to further His church on earth?

If we believe that God orchestrates history and has everything under control (and I, for one, believe this), don’t we have to see Constantine and his impact on Christianity as being God-ordained? Let’s think about the good things Constantine and the birth of Christendom did for Christianity. First of all, Constantine was the one who convened the pivotal Council of Nicea in 325, the first attempt at theological consensus and the birth of, among other things, the doctrine of the trinity, the holiday of Easter, and a concise articulation of Christian beliefs in the Nicene Creed. Without the precedent set by Nicea (which would likely not have happened without Constantine), Christian unity would have been long-delayed or otherwise impossible. And unity is crucial to Christian history.

Furthermore, perhaps we can look at the adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire as the event God used to really get His church disseminated throughout the world. Would Christianity have spread as fast and as far had it stayed underground? We’ll never know. But once Constantine sanctioned and protected it, Christianity was allowed to thrive and grow like never before. It also added a legitimacy to Christianity: the Roman Emperor breaking with tradition to adopt this upstart religion? People undoubtedly considered Christianity in a new light after this.

But I don’t want to offer an apologetic for Constantine, or Constantine-esque Christianity. I only want to suggest that before we go rushing to cut ourselves off from what we (and most secular people) perceive as a pretty suspicious institutional past, we should consider that 1) despite everything, the church is still thriving on earth; and 2) If you were Constantine and you discovered this amazing new way of thinking, wouldn’t you also want to us all your power to strengthen and spread it?

It’s easy for us in the comfy Christianized 21st century to scoff at Constantine, but I wonder: would we prefer that he had been as tenuous and apathetic about spreading Christianity then as we are now?

Seventeen Songs for Summer

It’s stifling hot in L.A., gas prices are surpassing $5/gallon, and the L.A. Film Festival is going on down the block in Westwood Village. This can only mean one thing: Summer is here!

In honor of this wonderful, extreme season, I’ve put together my annual summer music mix (I actually make several of these, to help pass the time in my new hour-plus commute). This year’s mix—comprised entirely of songs released within the last several months—is heavily electronic, 80s-nostalgic, more happy than morose, and a guaranteed good time.

Thanks to iTunes (and I promise they are not paying me to say this), you can locate and download these songs ala carte, with ridiculous ease. Hooray digital capitalism! Anyway, here’s the playlist. My soundtrack to the summer of ’08.

Coldplay, “Strawberry Swing” – Arguably the best overall song on Coldplay’s new album, this track—with its cheery rhythms and sunny guitar riffs—waxes nostalgic about blue skies, swings, and young love.

The Radio Dept., “Freddie and the Trojan Horse” – Sweden’s new-wave shoegazer outfit presents the perfect summer song from their wonderful new EP. It’s sweet like a popsicle.

Mates of State, “Help Help” – This bouncy, synth-bass-heavy pop gem from the husband/wife duo known as Mates of State is the best song off of their recent album, Re-arrange Us. You’ll love it, I promise.

Weezer, “The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived” – This song is a goofy good time. Borrowing a melody from a familiar Shaker hymn, Rivers Cuomo throws down a rock-opera of a pop song that features about a dozen kitschy mutations of its catchy chorus. Lots of fun. M83, “Graveyard Girl” – If you haven’t heard the new album from French electronica geniuses M83, I highly recommend you check it out. The new single, “Graveyard Girl,” is a blissful shoegazer anthem with a hilarious video (see below).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY8iy8S0S4w]

Sigur Ros, “Festival” – My favorite song off their new album, this 9-minute opus builds from nothing to a grandiose climax that will doubtless shake the rafters in concert. Truly breathtaking.

The Notwist, “Good Lies” – The first track off this German electronic band’s new album is perfectly joyful, even in it’s solemnity. Cut / Copy, “Hearts on Fire” – Listen to this song and you’d think you were listening to New Order or something else from the dancefloor 80s. But no, this is 2008 music from Australia. And it’s super cool.

Vampire Weekend, “Mansard Roof” – The Afro-pop hipsters from NYC may be a little overrated, but their bouncy tunes, like “Mansard Roof,” are absolutely perfect for summer. Check out the summery vid:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlgNFwoApec] Wolf Parade, “California Dreamer” – What’s a summer mix without a song about California? This new Wolf Parade song (from their just-released, At Mount Zoomer) is an epic anthem that alternates between delicate balladry and headstrong rock energy.

The National, “You’ve Done it Again, Virginia” – Every summer mix needs a few somber entries, and The National is always good for that. This new song from their recent Virginia EP features more luxuriant Sufjan piano and their usual "Gatsby with a cocktail" tragic elegance.

Cat Power, “Ramblin’ (Wo)Man” – This song from her recent Jukebox album is a sweetly feminine riff on Hank Williams’ song, “Ramblin’ Man.” A jazzy, sexy song for humid summer nights.

Ladytron, “Ghosts” – Britain’s favorite electro-goth-pop band’s new album, Velocifero, is fantastic. And this song is the first breezily haunting single. See below for the trippy video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yaEwcmrR4Q] Matt Wertz, “5:19” – This first single from Matt’s upcoming album, Under Summer Sun (to be released in August) is a lovely acoustic number with hyper-melodic hooks, perfect for summer love and heartbreak.

Fleet Foxes, “Ragged Wood” – One of the best discoveries of 2008, Seattle’s Fleet Foxes offer Beach Boys-esque harmonies with Appalachian and Irish traditional ancestry. It’s gorgeous, and the formidable “Ragged Wood” is a perfectly sweet/somber track to sample.

Nine Inch Nails, “Discipline” – For something edgier, try this fantastic new single from NIN’s The Slip—the album Trent Reznor gave away for free online this spring.

Death Cab for Cutie, “I Will Possess Your Heart” – This 8 minute song is slow to build and mostly instrumental, but there is something quite dreamy about it. Its travelogue video is a perfect accompaniment to those of us traveling abroad this summer:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pq-yP7mb8UE&feature=related]

Is Teenage Pregnancy Now Cool?

Have you heard of this latest “what is happening with our kids” shock story? Apparently 17 high school girls at Gloucester High in Massachusetts decided last fall to make an unusual pact: to all get pregnant and raise their babies together. They wanted to, ya know, throw baby showers and stuff. Sure enough, they pulled it off, roping in whatever willing males they could find (including a 24-year-old homeless man) to help with the project. The group/club/clique members are expecting their bevy of babies sometime this summer.

The story broke just days after it was announced that 17-year-old Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to her baby, and a few months after Juno became the hippest teen-preggers pic of all time. Obviously it has people wondering: has pop culture made teenage pregnancy the new “it” thing?

In the past, teenage girls who became pregnant while freshmen in high school viewed it as a life-altering tragedy. Not at Gloucester. Reportedly the girls high-fived each other when one of their pregnancy tests came back positive. School officials are baffled, wondering what went wrong with their sex-ed programs and generous contraceptive distribution. Unfortunately no amount of contraceptives will prevent this new reproductive trend: girls trying to get pregnant.

This story horrifies me, in the way the recent Abortion Girl story horrified me. In both cases, pregnancy—the most sacred and miraculous of all human phenomena—was turned into little more than a recreational activity, a game. For Abortion Girl it was a means to make a political/artistic statement: getting pregnant as many times as possible, so as to abort as many times as possible. With these Gloucester girls, getting pregnant was a social activity, like going to the mall or the prom—just something fun to do together.

Has creating a human life really been reduced to this? Call me crazy, but to bring a life—indeed, a soul—into the world (a world that has seen better days) seems to me a rather serious proposition. Yes I know it often happens on accident, but when it is planned should it not be planned with the utmost care and selfless love? Having a baby should not be like buying a new purse or getting a new haircut, and it certainly should not be an action taken out of desperate adolescent loneliness (it was suggested that the girls did this so they could receive some unconditional love).

Whatever the cause (and I don’t think it’s Juno), I’m pretty sure it doesn’t bode well for our society. God help us, and God help those poor little girls and their future children.

The New (and Improved) Coldplay

I wasn’t quite sure what I expected when I bought Coldplay’s new album earlier this week—I suppose I expected it to be a lot of patented sappy love songs and stadium anthems for the middle class preppies in the suburbs (I bought my copy in Starbucks, after all). But I have to say, this album shocked me—in a very good way. Is this really Coldplay? These songs are inventive—even progressive! They still have that ethereal “to the rafters” grandeur to them, but—amazingly—they are more restrained and nuanced than anything they have ever done.

From the gorgeous, electronic instrumental opening (“Life in Technicolor”) to the ghostly hidden coda track (“The Escapist”… aka part II of “Death and All His Friends”), this is an album of lush musical diversity and sonic subtleties. It’s exquisite. It’s not radio-friendly in the least (apart from the title track), but it may very well prove to be their most popular album. It’s certainly their best since Parachutes.

It’s also an album that—in some ways—represents what an album could (should?) be in this era of the death of the album. It is fitting that Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” song has been in all the iTunes ads this spring. This is an album for the iTunes age. With ala carte music consumption, music has re-oriented itself to songs over albums, randomized playlists over coherent LPs. Viva la Vida is an album in the sense that it is one collection of songs released together, but other than that it seems to be something altogether different. These songs have little to do with one another, and some sections of some of the songs have little to do with other sections.

Indeed, I wonder how we can categorize “songs” in the context of this album. Several tracks on Viva have more than one musical thought going on. Track 5 is the clearest example: “Lovers in Japan / Reign of Love” is a couplet of an upbeat rock number and a mournful electro-ballad, respectively. You might say the latter (which is my favorite song on the album) compliments the former, but I’m hard-pressed to see them as anything more than two completely separate emotional moments juxtaposed because, well, sometimes our moods change that fast.

Other songs on the album don’t even name their dual sections. Track 6, “Yes,” begins as an eastern-inspired minor chord anthem about sexual frustration (featuring Chris Martin singing in the lowest key he’s ever attempted) and then becomes a breezy shoegazer romp (apparently called “Chinese Sleep Chant,” but not advertised as such on the album cover). Same goes for the final track, “Death and All His Friends,” which ends on a rousing, rhythmically-daring note, only to be followed by the aforementioned fade-out song (“The Escapist,” also unadvertised). Many of these multi-section songs could easily have been split into separate tracks, but they weren’t. Why? It’s almost as if Coldplay is rewarding iTunes buyers by giving them two-for-one specials; or perhaps they are just showing how interesting an album of haphazard shifts and unpredictable turns can be.

The album feels totally incoherent, but in a coherent sort of way. It feels like an album of the 21st century, where our only frame of reference is, in fact, disjointedness. The album mimics our digitally fragmented lives, when everything is on shuffle and our attentions and cares and feelings are so interchangeable and fluid that sixty minutes of musical narrative (even five minutes of one song) have a hard time connecting with us. Indeed, Coldplay’s lyrics on this album are hardly narrative at all—just words and thoughts and random images, strewn together paratextually in the way our laptop screens bind together our images, emails, memories, interests, and connections. We are a windows world now; our interfaces are multifarious and rarely singularly focused. Sometimes we feel mournful (“Cemeteries of London”), sometimes joyful (“Strawberry Swing”), but hardly ever do we feel wholly one or the other. Coldplay’s album is the musical embodiment of this.

The title alone (Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends) shows how eclectic this album really is. The use of Spanish indicates the international feel of the music, and the nonsensical bonus title shows that the album is, well, anything you want it to be. Viva borrows bits and pieces of world music (Middle-eastern, North African, Latin American, etc) and borrows from a wild array of styles—everything from shoegazer to tribal organ to electronic minimalism. It’s pastiche of the highest order, and I absolutely love it.

New Mediascape Website!

For those who don't know, I have been the editor in chief of the scholarly e-journal, Mediascape, for the past year. It's UCLA's graduate journal of cinema and media studies, and it publishes once a year in online-only format. We've been hard at work these past months rebuilding our website and getting our new issue together. I'm proud to announce that it is finally done, and I urge you to take a look at it here: http://www.tft.ucla.edu/mediascape/

The pseudo-theme of this issue is comedy, and we have some interesting articles about The Darjeeling Limited, Vince Vaughn, frat-pack movies, multi-camera sitcoms & How I Met Your Mother, Jewishness and comedy, Brothers and Sisters, and Jon Stewart... among many others.

If you like scholarly approaches to film/media/pop culture, check out these articles. They're quite interesting and I'm proud of our staff for putting together such a strong journal issue.

The Best of Hitchcock

I saw M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening today, and I can say nothing of that now (my review will be up at CT Movies on Friday). Well, I will say this: it has its share of creepy—sometimes downright disturbing—moments. Shyamalan continues to try to live up to the early Hitchcock comparisons, and though this is clearly a stretch, I do think both directors share a penchant for stylishly-rendered scares. Still, Hitchcock is by far the better of the two, and I’d like to pay homage by listing my five favorite Hitchcock films, with some images from Vanity Fair’s recent tribute photo spread.

5) Rear Window (1954): As thrillers go, Rear Window is about as good as it gets. So many horror/suspense film conventions were either invented or perfected in this film, which uses voyeurism to both scare us and provide a commentary on our human impulses to spy on and live vicariously through the lives of others. The below image features Scarlett Johansson and Javier Bardem as the Grace Kelly and wheelchair-bound Jimmy Stewart characters.

4) The 39 Steps (1935): Hitchcock made this spy-plotted film while still in England, and many consider it his finest British thriller. It’s certainly not one of his scariest, but it is totally engrossing (what with the burning question “What are the 39 steps?”) and thoroughly British/Scottish, which is probably why I love it so much.

3) Psycho (1960): This film still holds up as one of the most frightening of all time, and Janet Leigh’s fateful shower scene (recreated below with actress Marion Cotillard) is undoubtedly one of the most significant single scenes in film history. Killing off the star actress halfway through the film, by a cross-dressing, knife-wielding sociopath (in the shower, no less!)? Shocking!

2) Shadow of a Doubt (1943): This is one of the most under-seen and under-appreciated of all Hitchcock films, and yet Hitchcock himself cited it as his personal favorite. An unsettling, noir-ish usurping of the American suburban ideal, the Thornton Wilder-penned Doubt is perhaps Hitchcock’s most subtle, insidious American film.

1) Rebecca (1940): Hitchcock’s films were never really known for their great acting, but in the case of the supremely creepy Rebecca—with stellar performances from Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, and Judith Anderson (the latter two interpreted below by Keira Knightley and Jennifer Jason Leigh)—the performances made the film. Hitchcock’s first American feature (though set in England) is intensely elegant and ridiculously creepy.

Kitschiest Christian Songs Ever!

I’ve been pretty hard on contemporary Christian music on this blog, but let me just say this: it’s much better today than it was, say, ten or fifteen years ago. But who knows, maybe we’ll say the same thing about today’s music ten years from now. In any event, I thought it would be fun (in a self-flagellating sort of way) to revisit some of the kitschy horrors of Christian music’s past. These are the songs that dominated the “special music” circuit at evangelical churches everywhere back in the 90s. They are the ones we wish to forget, but also have a semi-fondness for (ironically, of course!). Here are my picks for the top ten kitschiest Christian songs of all time, with visual aids where available!

10) TIE: “This Means War!” and “Get on Your Knees and Fight Like a Man” – I couldn’t decide which cheesy Petra song to include, so I just picked these two (which might be the cheesiest). These songs may not be familiar to many, but as examples of deliciously awful 80s Christian metal, these gems more than represent. Thank you John Schlitt, for being the big-haired bad boy of CCM. You gotta love hellfire-and-brimstone lyrics like this: “Now it's all over down to the wire / Counting the days to your own lake of fire.”

9) “El Shaddai” – This 1982 classic, penned by Amy Grant and Michael Card, is as vintage CCM kitsch as you can get. The desperately somber, uber-melodic song features multi-lingual lyrics that lend it its patented sense of gravitas. This song also works very well when performed in sign language (preferably by a church’s “signers ministry”).

8) “Household of Faith” – There was a time in the 90s when this harmony-heavy Steve Green song was performed at every Baptist wedding within a six state area. But apparently people are still (remarkably) choosing this as a wedding song, as recently as 2007. And it looks like it’s still a favorite for Sunday night special music as well!

7) “Who’s In the House? (Kickin’ it for Christ)” – Ne’er was there a more disastrous attempt at white guy Christian rap than in this Carmen catastrophe from 1993. And the scary thing is there are still Christians getting jiggy to this song. See this horrifying clip from Jesus Camp. Oh, and for more painful laughs, here’s the official music video.

6) “Via Dolorosa” – Anyone who grew up in a Baptist church no doubt saw this Spanglish tearjerker performed by some unfortunate wannabe soprano once or twice as a “special music.” Props to the “first diva” of Christian music, Sandi “the Voice” Patty, for this gem!

5) “Behold the Lamb” – Subtlety is a rarity on this list, but it is absolutely nowhere to be found in this overblown wonder. Check out the video of David Phelps singing it. If there was a Christian version of American Idol, this would be performed every season.

4) “In the Presence of Jehovah” – This song is a great example of the popular “white church ladies trying to sing black” church music genre. Tons of opps for runs and trills, crazy vibrato and hand flailing. It’s also a great one for making the old ladies cry, and sometimes works well with a wind machine!

3) "People Need the Lord" – The most epic of all Steve Green songs! This tear-inducing evangelistic anthem is oft-used as background music during missionary montage videos. It also makes for a good duet, though be warned: his one is excruciating to watch!

2) "Thank You For Giving to the Lord" – This 1988 Ray Boltz weepie is the quintessential offertory anthem. Put some dynamo tenor in a suit up on stage and poof, the money will pour into the offering plates. This one definitely warrants a youtube viewing. Get those Kleenex ready!

1) “Love in Any Language” – This song beats them all. Just watch this fantastic video of (who else?) Sandi Patty leading a multi-ethnic chorus in a “we are the world”-type performance at some Gaither family event. I mean… what can be said?

BONUS! - “I Pledge Allegiance to the Lamb”: I simply can’t resist mentioning this song—another Ray Boltz classic. 

Could Paul Be President?

I’m not sure why the Apostle Paul would ever want to be the president of the United States, but let’s say he wanted to. Would he have a chance of being elected if he ran in 2008? In a word: NO.

Why not, you might ask? He’s a brilliant writer, thinker, and all-around passionate person, not to mention a SAINT! He wrote the texts that became the theological foundation of the Christian faith, after all. That has to count for something, right? Unfortunately Paul has a huge skeleton in his closet: a history of mercilessly persecuting and killing Christians. His past is very, very sketchy, and if you are a politician running for President of the United States these days, your past better be absolutely spotless.

It doesn’t matter how brilliant or well-spoken Paul might be. The minute word got out (and circulated via cable news) about Paul’s wild pre-conversion days as the Christian-hating Saul, he’d be toast. The James Dobsons and Pat Robertsons across America would denounce Paul as an unpatriotic anathema—someone who, with such a horrible record of unchristian behavior, could not be trusted to run the country. Let’s face it: if Paul ran for President of the United States, he might as well pick Osama bin Laden as his running mate. He’d have about as much of a chance as Ron Paul to win the presidency.

It’s a strange time when, in America—a country which has always prided itself on fresh starts and second chances—a presidential hopeful is absolutely bound to their past sins, scandals, and gaffs. The 2008 election has proven that one’s past is, perhaps, the most important determinant of one’s electability. Each of men running for president has their own personal albatross: that is, their own past baggage that could prove disastrous for their White House chances.

For Obama, the biggie is Reverend Wright—the outspoken Chicago pastor who has a penchant for colorful, impassioned critiques of America. When the Wright soundbites hit the cable news circuits a few months ago, Obama was suddenly questioned: is he unpatriotic by association? Does Obama share his pastor’s extreme and polarizing views of race, 9/11, and the American government? Even as Obama denounced Wright’s remarks and severed ties with the controversial pastor, the media seems determined to brand the Wright scandal as Obama’s potential Achilles’ heel.

John McCain’s major albatross, of course, is his association with President Bush. Now the extent of his actual association with Bush is relatively negligible in the grand scheme of Republican politics, and indeed, Bush and McCain have been bitter rivals more often than they’ve been buddy-buddy. They differ quite a bit on policies too, but the mere fact that McCain is a Republican, supports continued troop presence in Iraq, and doesn’t publicly denounce President Bush makes him “Bush II” in the many voters’ eyes. He can distance himself all he wants from the current administration, but the past eight years of Republican-led government will nevertheless haunt McCain as he tries to build a case for himself as a “different type” of Republican.

In each case, the most damaging thing for the candidate is in the past—and it’s not even something they themselves did or said! It’s some one they were associated with: Obama with Rev. Wright, McCain with Bush… Are we really ready to disqualify someone on the basis of who they know? Should politics really be about how cleanly one has kept his or her company, admitting only the most inoffensive, neutral, uncontroversial people into the inner circle? I’m not so sure this is at all what we want in a leader.

Think about Jesus: he kept company with some pretty scandalous and generally unseemly people. He openly criticized the government of the day, in much stronger language than anything Rev. Wright is saying of America today. Heck, if Paul would be a controversial presidential candidate, imagine Jesus! He wouldn’t have the murderous record of persecuting Christians to defend, but he would have to answer for those pesky claims of divinity (talk about elitism!) and his tendency to favor blunt language over politically-correct platitudes.

The point of all this is not to suggest that Christianity and politics are impossibly opposed; on the contrary, I think that Christians should get involved in politics. But it’s important to remember that our faith is about forgiveness—redemption, renewal, and the unbinding of past shackles. Our faith would be pointless if we let our past mistakes inhibit our future success. We are reliant on the reconciliatory power of the gospel—that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come”… that God reconciled the world to himself in Christ, not counting our sins (past, present, and future) against us (2 Corinthians 5:16-19). As Christians, we’d be hypocrites to demand spotless moral records from anyone, even our presidents.

Can We Speak/Think Things Into Being?

Over the past couple weeks I’ve had the curious pleasure of hearing a couple of the world’s foremost “gurus”—Deepak Chopra and Tony Robbins—give their respective accounts of human happiness to a classroom of wide-eyed college students. Chopra and Robbins are champions of “wellness” and mind-body-spirit synchronicity, preaching a new-agey self-help gospel not dissimilar from Rhonda Byrne’s Oprah-sanctioned The Secret. Central to each of their dogmas is a salvific belief in the power of positive thinking. For Chopra, this translates into things like “narrative medicine” and the assertion that beliefs can convert into actual molecules, that “our consciousness creates our biology.” Robbins articulates it in terms of pop-psychology, emphasizing the power of frames and syntax in the construction of our identities and personal stories, suggesting that “the way we think about our self changes the reality of who we are.” And of course this is all simplified rather nicely in The Secret, which similarly maintains that our thoughts can create our reality: “You become AND attract what you think.”

Now, my initial response to all of this is that it is complete and utter gobbledygook. Do we really think that we can change our biology, our personality, our material circumstance in life just by thinking about it a lot? Does our saying something bring it into being? Surely not…

But as a good postmodern (I use that designation loosely… in the postmodern sense, I suppose) who has studied Communication, Critical Theory, and Literary Theory in graduate school, I must admit there are lingering suspicions in my mind that there is something to this idea of reality as the construction of language, of declaration.

And speaking of declarations, perhaps we should turn to Jacques Derrida and his essay “Declarations of Independence” to understand these ideas. Derrida uses the Declaration of Independence to argue for the arbitrariness of all claims to power, specifically in the line “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable Rights.” Derrida finds in this statement a profound contradiction: on one hand the signatories of the Declaration are invoking natural law/God and are thus stating a “constative” (to use Derrida’s term), while on the other hand they say that “we hold these truths to be self-evident,” which for Derrida is “performative”—it establishes the truth of the stated principles by means of the very act of stating them. If the truths are self-evident to all human beings, for example, why do we even need to point out that they are self-evident? The signatories must establish themselves as holding the truths to be self-evident. For Derrida, this is a performative declaration masquerading as a constative.

Indeed, isn’t it true that in our multicultural, heterogeneous, globalized world we have come to recognize that language (all communication, really) takes on an unavoidably performative dimension? That is: communication must be seen in cultural context—as a means of making meaning that is both “of” and “for” reality. What is “true” or taken as constative in one culture (e.g. “The sky is blue”) may be totally incomprehensible in another, where different words and expressions create different realities of what otherwise might be thought of as a “universal.” Different cultures emphasize different values and articulate different aspects of reality—and even those things that do seem universal (“love,” “sadness”) are articulated or understood in vastly different ways. Clearly, the way that we communicate the world to ourselves (in culturally and temporally specific contexts), determines what that world is, at least in terms of our perceptions of it (and what else do we have but our perceptions??).

And so, if we admit that to some extent our realities come into being through the various ways we communicate them to one another, is it that much of a stretch to believe Chopra, Robbins, and The Secret lady when they say that we can think our way to better lives??

Well, before we get too carried away, let’s think a bit more practically about all this. After all, aren’t there pretty obvious limits to “the power of declaration”? It’s not like we (unlike God) can simply say “Let there be light” if we are afraid of the dark. It’s not like we can declare “I want to fly” and then take off like Peter Pan… That is one belief, Deepak, that I don’t think can morph into molecular reality.

And of course, we still have the problems of first principles, of legitimacy and authority in the original instance. For rationalists/modernists like Jurgen Habermas, the untamed fluidity of performative declarations always begs the question, “in the name of what?” That is, if we have any recourse to dialogical reasonableness (i.e. the cognitive acceptance of another person’s statement as having some merit) we must appeal to some sort of transcendent norm or power. How could we ever converse across cultures? There must be some overarching power that allows us to accept logic and dismiss ridiculousness.

Hannah Arendt is perhaps the most articulate in highlighting the problem of circularity inherent in every foundational act or beginning. If it is true that the will of a person (to assert certain truths as self-evident, for example) is the source of all legitimacy, then from where do the people originally derive their authority? With respect to Derrida’s notion that the declaration “all men are created equal” is self-evident only because we posit it as such, Arendt responds that no, our experience shows us that men are not created equal, but become equal only through political order and constitutional assurances of equality.

The insinuation is that there are practical things that we must do, not just say, in order to bring things into being. And in this highly-mediated election season in which promises and soundbites and declarations are bandied about with gluttonous abandon, we would do well to recognize this fact: Words themselves can only do so much.

Yes, Rev. Wright, it is true that words can do quite a lot (Obama knows that better than anyone), but one can speak only so much truth to power. To those who feel slighted by the system or otherwise silenced, a word well spoken is a powerful thing, yes. But it is not all powerful. Language is an effective mediator, but it is not a creator.

My Favorite Movie Scores

This week the accomplished film-music composer Hans Zimmer spoke to one of my classes at UCLA, regaling us with stories of getting fired by Stanley Kubrick (on Full Metal Jacket), hired by Terrence Malick (who sought Zimmer out for The Thin Red Line because he loved the music in Disney’s The Lion King), and composing the “unprecedented” two-note Joker theme for the upcoming film, The Dark Knight.

Zimmer was quite interesting and gave me a new appreciation for the importance and artistry of film scoring. He also got me thinking about the films scores I have loved over the years—those that (in my opinion) elevated the films they accompanied to goosebump-inducing heights. The following is my list of my favorite ten movie scores of all time. What are your favorites?

10) Mulholland Drive – Angelo Badalamenti: Like in his other work for David Lynch, Badalamenti creates a score here that is thick and layered and mysterious. Just like the film.

9) 25th Hour – Terrence Blanchard: This brooding, daring, deeply emotional score provides a cathartic and memorable accompaniment to Spike Lee’s sadly overlooked post-9/11 elegy.

8) Pride & Prejudice – Dario Marianelli: Marianelli received a lot of attention for his Atonement score last year, but I think his best work so far has been the lush, piano-driven score for Joe Wright’s 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice. Who can forget the impressionistic effect of the minimalist music in the famous sunrise scene at the end?

7) Hoosiers – Jerry Goldsmith: Music is so important for rousing sports movies (see Chariots of Fire), and in my view Jerry Goldsmith sets the standard with his synthy work in Hoosiers. Totally 80s… but totally timeless. It almost always makes me want to stand up and cheer.

6) Dances With Wolves – John Barry: Say what you will about the movie itself, but the sweeping, romantic score by the legendary John Barry is absolutely unforgettable. Combined with the film’s gorgeous western landscape photography, this music really soars.

5) Lord of the Rings trilogy – Howard Shore: The music in LOTR is bombastic and ubiquitous… but in all the right ways. So many memorable themes and melodies and moments. The climactic moment in Return of the King when Sam picks up Frodo on Mt. Doom and the music swells to the theme… Oh, man, it gets me every time.

4) Days of Heaven – Ennio Morricone: It was either this or The Mission for the obligatory inclusion of an Ennio Morricone score. I’ll go with Days, because it’s one of my favorite movies of all time… and Morricone’s score is such a beautiful tragedy.

3) Star Wars (the entire series) – John Williams: What can I say? It’s iconic. The Imperial March, the Cantina theme, the stunning main titles, even the “Duel of the Fates”… I don’t know what Star Wars would be without its wonderful music.

2) Braveheart – James Horner: Okay, so it’s true: music has never been more shamelessly employed for a tear-jerker ending. But it’s an ending that—thanks in no small part to the music—provides one of cinema’s most emotionally cathartic moments. Add in some bagpipe and woodwind glory and this is one of the most satisfying film scores I’ve ever heard.

1) The Thin Red Line – Hans Zimmer: A lot of people will tell you that Gladiator is Zimmer’s best film score, but in my view it doesn’t hold a candle to his masterful soundtrack to Terrence Malick’s epic WWII film. Utilizing a cacophony of dreamy strings, exotic chants, riffs on folk hymns, and otherworldy melodies, Zimmer creates a soundscape of Germanic romanticism and Heideggerian phenomenology—so fitting for a Malick film.

Just missed the list: The Hours (Philip Glass), American Beauty (Thomas Newman), The Godfather (Nino Rota), E.T. (John Williams), Last of the Mohicans (Randy Edelman), The Fountain (Clint Mansell), Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood), The Mission (Ennio Morricone), There Will Be Blood (Johnny Greenwood), Out of Africa (John Barry), Letters from Iwo Jima (Kyle Eastwood), The Cider House Rules (Rachel Portman).

Mister Lonely

Harmony Korine is an arthouse director if there ever was one. Actually, he's probably beyond arthouse--more avant-garde than anything. His films--1997's Gummo, 1999's Julien Donkey Boy, and now Mister Lonely--are unlike anything else coming out of American cinema. This is neither a praise nor a criticism. It is simply a fact that Harmony Korine--along with people like Vincent Gallo, David Gordon Green, and Richard Kelly--is one of the most distinct young voices in art cinema today.

Mister Lonely (see the trailer here) tells two simultaneous stories that have nothing at all to do with one another (though ultimately they do compliment each other). The first and dominant narrative concerns a commune in the Scottish highlands where a band of celebrity impersonators (including Madonna, James Dean, Queen Elizabeth, the Three Stooges, the Pope, Sammy Davis Jr. and Abraham Lincoln) live together in a bizarre and ultimately tragic fog of confused identity. The story focuses on Marilyn Monroe (the wonderful Samantha Morton) and Michael Jackson (a fantastic Diego Luna), as well as Madonna's abusive husband (Charlie Chaplin) and their dainty daughter (Shirley Temple).

The second story is even more fantastical--and concerns a group of nuns somewhere in Latin America who discover that they can jump from planes without parachutes and survive. Their deep belief in God apparently bestows them with this miraculous ability, and by the end of the film the group--led by an eccentric priest (Werner Herzog) head off to the Vatican to have the Pope recognize their unique penchant for gravity-defying miracles.

Though there is plenty to talk about with respect to the "flying nuns" storyline, I'd like to discuss the celebrity wannabes in this particular post. I should first note that the actors who play these people (who impersonate their respective celebrity icons) are intentionally awkward and not all that good at what they do (though their costumes and basic mannerisms are spot-on). They are people who are so uncomfortable in their own skin that they feel they must live as (or through) the celebrities they idolize. It's particularly sad to see them perform their stage "act" (in a decidedly minstrelsy scene late in the film) to an audience of about five. No one wants to see mediocre celebrity fakers; it's terribly depressing. Indeed, the film's mood is one of tragic, surrealist comedy: a sort of Waiting for Guffman-meets-David Lynch parade of naive whimsy and dark, eerie ambiance. It’s disarming to see Charlie Chaplin playing ping pong with Michael Jackson, or Queen Elizabeth dancing with James Dean. And these people never really break character (even when no one is watching), which is, well, just plain odd. It’s like watching an extended (and more poetic) episode of VH1’s The Surreal Life, only with A-list celebs who may or may not still be living.

It’s hard to say what exactly this film is about, but I think that’s probably the idea. The film is as confused as its characters are: about themselves, about each other, and about the world. But it feels very pertinent in this age of celebrity obsession, digital avatars, and postmodern identity. Increasingly we construct elaborate “lives” for ourselves in lieu of any sort of understood Self. Indeed, as Erving Goffman noted in The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, we define ourselves in terms of the masks we try to live up to—and yet perhaps this mask is our truer self. In any case, there is a painful absence of self in this film: these people don’t know who they are, and Korine gives us nothing in the way of privileged knowledge otherwise. They are society’s outcasts, clinging together as spectral visages of immortalized icons, hoping for some sort of salvific utopia in their collective embodiment of the ghosts of pop culture’s past.

Though slow at parts, and certainly unfathomable from any conventional "what is this about?" point of view, Mister Lonely has some truly remarkable sequences and moments, beautifully photographed, edited, and assembled with an artist's touch. The blend of image and sound is particularly strong, and in this way the film reminded me of Gus Van Sant's recent triumph, Paranoid Park (my review here). Mister Lonely features a beautiful score from Jason Pierce of Spiritualized, as well as some classic hymns and modern tracks that accompany various stretches of poetic imagery. Bobby Vinton's "Mister Lonely," for example, is lusciously set to an introductory slow-mo sequence. An old recording of the hymn “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” provides the backdrop for one of the most striking montage sequences, and the Tennessee Mountaineers’ version of “Standing on the Promises” provides a striking song for the closing credits. Music by Aphex Twin and A Silver Mt. Zion also contribute to the overall ambience of the film.

Clearly Mister Lonely is not for everyone, and I daresay most people won’t be able to see it on the big screen even if they wanted to. But if you like lyrical, abstract-ish or surreal cinema, do make an effort to at least Netflix this film. There’s really nothing else like it.

Congratulations David Cook!

Kansas City is on a winning streak this Spring. In April, KC's favorite hometown college (The University of Kansas) won the NCAA championship in basketball. Now we have another winner to boast: the newly-crowned American Idol, David Cook. Now if only the Royals can get above .500...

Cook beat "little David" by twelve million votes--a landslide victory even in spite of the judges' effusive praise for David "I can sing the phone book with my eyes closed" Archuleta. Turns out America is ready for an American Idol winner who actually writes and plays music. Imagine that! I hope the Idol handlers can improve Cook's talent (or at least not ruin him)... he already has one album under his belt (his self-released Analog Heart) and the forthcoming major-label debut should be interesting. Maybe he'll do more Mariah Carey covers!

Four Easy Pieces

I. A lot of people are hating on Prince Caspian, for understandable (if not completely sympathetic) reasons: the movie is vastly different than the book, especially in overall tone and spirit. The film is a swashbuckling war epic that is about 66% battle scenes and/or sword fights, and certainly this is not what Lewis’s classic children’s tale is about. And yet I enjoyed the film, and I’m perplexed at all those who angrily dismiss it as “missing the point.” What do you expect when a children’s book from 50 years ago is transformed into a big-budget summer blockbuster in the year 2008? (That said, I do suggest reading this creative critique of the film.)

I don’t want to defend the film too much, because it is certainly not perfect; but to judge it on the merits of the book is not completely fair. The moving image, after all, is a remarkably different medium than the written word. Cinema removes the element of imagination (or at least downplays it) which is crucial to books and novels (especially children’s fantasy!). In books, we visualize the characters, settings, and action. In film, it is done for us—our attention directed hither and yon from one set piece, sequence, or costume to another. In lieu of the removed element of “interaction” (the ability of the reader to co-create the reality of the story), cinema must compensate in other ways: offering high-intensity spectacle, gloss, and action to hold our interest and transport us into a world.

To fault Caspian for being too action-heavy, then, is to misunderstand the purpose of cinematic adaptation. A film could never equal the experience of a book; the best book-to-film adaptations are those that are the most true to form (i.e. cinematic) and that don’t get bogged down in something that is ontologically contrary (i.e. the literary). Film theorist Andre Bazin harped on this, and for good reason. He wrote that “If the cinema today is capable of effectively taking on the realm of the novel and the theater, it is primarily because it is sure enough of itself and master enough of its means so that it no longer needs assert itself in the process. That is to say it can now aspire to fidelity—not the illusory fidelity of a replica—through an intimate understanding of its own true aesthetic structure which is a prerequisite and necessary condition of respect for the works it is about to make its own.”

The film version of Narnia does Lewis justice to not try to capture his literary genius on film. It does better to focus on its own form (spectacularized summer blockbuster) and wow the audience with cinematic wonder, in the way Lewis wows us with his poetic literary whimsy. One might complain, for example, that the film transforms Susan into a Tarantino-eque killing machine, wielding a bow-and-arrow with Legolas-like tenacity. But this is a film, built around action, so it’s much better to have our heroine Susan smack-dab in the middle of it all rather than cheering from the off-camera sidelines. Sure, the film loses much of the book’s innocence and spiritual “themes”—the “deeper magic” of Narnia, after all, is not something that WETA special effects can really evoke (certainly not as well as the written words of Lewis could). But the film offers us something altogether more visceral that the book could never express. But we’re talking about apples and oranges here: films and books. We should move on.

II.

“The medium is the message,” said Marshall McLuhan. Meaning: the form of a message shapes its content. Indeed, the form is itself a kind of content. McLuhan wrote in the 60s, as the television form was revolutionizing the world. His contribution to communication theory was the idea that technological change (with particular respect to media and communication technologies) shapes humanity in deep and significant ways: new media forms “work us over completely,” he wrote. “They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered… Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments.”

McLuhan divided history into eras and epochs of media transformation: the tribal era (oral, tribal culture, face-to-face communication), the literate era (invention of alphabets and written language, emphasis on the visual), the print era (printing press, birth of mass communication, visual emphasis), and the electronic era (computers, telegraph, emphasis on touch and hearing). Whether or not one agrees completely with McLuhan’s somewhat suspicious lineage here, I think it is definitely true that technology effects how humans relate to each other and the world.

And I wonder if we are not moving into some new “era” that is better fit to our digified, attention-challenged generation? A sort of bite-sized, schizophrenic, decontextualized-yet-hyperlinked period of human civilization.

III.

Television was probably the beginning of this “snack” era. Its form, as noted by McLuhan’s heir Neil Postman, was one of decontextualized soundbites: segments of entertainment juxtaposed with advertisements, “news,” sports, and other diverse occurrences. The form of television news, for example, was one of total and utter schizophrenia: “this happened… and then this… now weather, now sports, now BREAKING NEWS, now pop culture fluff…” This very form (emphasizing ands rather than whys), argued Postman, has conditioned the human mind to be less capable of understanding context and perspective. In the stream of broadcast images and commercials, there is very little recourse to depth or understanding.

And how much moreso is this the case with the Internet! Here we are freed from all over-arching narratives, causal linkage or contextualized coherence. We can (and do) hop from CNN.com to TMZ.com, from Bible.com to ESPN, picking up bits and pieces and snippets of whatever our fingers feel led to click on. Since I’m on my computer now I might as well mimic this in my writing, since writing as a form is changing as well…

Here I am on CNN.com, surveying the “news” on Sunday, May 18, 2008. Oh, there is a positive review from Cannes of Indiana Jones! Richard Corliss liked it, saying that it “delivers smart, robust, familiar entertainment.” This eases my mind a bit… though I have heard that other Cannes audience members were not quite as wowed as Corliss was… Speaking of Cannes, I just saw a picture of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie from the Kung Fu Panda premiere. Looking very, very good. I hope Brad Pitt isn’t messing up Terrence Malick’s new film Tree of Life, which is filming in Texas right now. Evidently Angelina is pregnant with twins, which probably means some unfortunate little Burmese orphan won’t get adopted this year. Speaking of Burma, I’m now clicking on the latest CNN headline about the cyclone in Mynamar… Evidently the UN is now saying over 100,000 might be dead. Meanwhile, China just started its three days of mourning for the earthquake victims, which now number 32,477. And if we’re talking numbers, I now see that Prince Caspian raked in $56.6 million to be the top film at the box office this weekend. That’s a lot more that Speed Racer made last week, but a lot less than Iron Man made in its first weekend. And the death toll from the earthquake in China is a lot more than the toll of those killed in tornadoes last weekend in America (24 I seem to recall), but a lot less than the 2004 tsunami disaster (more than 225,000 killed).

IV.

Unfortunately, as easy and accessible as the “news” and “numbers” are for all these things, there is scarcely little in the way of making sense of it all… Indeed, the very fact that we juxtapose things like Cannes glamour and human misery (earthquakes, cyclones) as if they were equally crucial bits of information makes it difficult to think of anything in terms of meaning or context. But perhaps we don’t want to. Perhaps the world is just too crazy, too horribly gone-wrong to reckon with on any level deeper than the snack-sized soundbite. To come to terms with the scope of the Asian disasters means to think about deeper things like God, death, evil, and nature, which gets quite broad and philosophical in a jiffy. Taking time to make connections is a dying art, just as reading is… and writing, and newspapers, and printed anything… Basically the “long form” and all that that entails is falling to the wayside in our easy-pieces-based culture. Thus, I should probably end this rather long blog post, and I should probably end somewhere near the start, as if clicking back on my browser about fifty times.

Prince Caspian the book and Prince Caspian the movie are quite different things, representing different times and cultures and mindsets. It’s true that the latter loses some of the magic and meaning of the former, but so it is with life these days. We’ve supplanted meaning with simulacra and snack-sized spectacle. Even though we probably need it more than ever, “the deeper magic” is ever more abstract and inaccessible to a world so desperate for instant and easy gratification.

Transmedia Superstars

When Scarlett Johansson announced she was going to release an album of Tom Waits cover songs, she was just the latest in a long line of celebrities who have “crossed over” from one media form to another—in her case, film to music. Celebs have been doing this for a long time, but these days it is happening with increasing frequency, it seems. Indeed, the “media-specific” star is pretty much dead; instead, we have “transmedia” superstars—those stars who transcend media forms and disseminate their personality in a multiplicity of forms and outlets.

It’s easy to see why this type of star is increasingly the norm. It has to do with shifts in the industrial landscape of Hollywood and the entertainment business. In a word: conglomeration. Disney was the first Hollywood “major” to introduce the concept of horizontal-integration back in the 50s, when it began cross-promoting Disney’s brand on television, in film, and in theme parks, earning money from each but also from the synergistic effects of the whole enterprise. Then in the 80s, government deregulation paved the way for more and more entertainmnent companies to combine and form massive conglomerates, so that one parent company (Viacom, for example) had control over film companies, TV channels (both network and cable), record companies, book publishers, etc. The result was an explosion of cross-promotion and intertextual dialogues: films based on television shows, television shows featuring the music by so-and-so, books based on films, etc… Throw in the Internet and it all adds up to a convergence in which media forms more fluidly relate to each other, telling the same stories just in different, though complimentary, ways.

Success in this sort of environment lives and dies on the strength of brand—namely brands that are strong enough to thrive on a multitude of media platforms (think The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, or Sex and the City)—and what better brands are there than celebrities? When you see a celebrity’s name on a movie poster, you know what that movie will offer. Quentin Tarantino is a brand. So is Beyonce. And Oprah, well, she’s the mother of all celeb brands.

For these celeb-brands, it makes sense (both for themselves and for the industries that finance them) to expand to as many media forms as possible. If I’m Oprah and I know millions of people will do whatever it is I do (or say), why not have a TV show, an entire TV channel, a magazine, some made-for-TV movies, a book club brand, and so on… In this day and age, there are no longer “movie stars” or “TV stars” as much as there are just “stars”… famous people with their hands in a little bit of everything.

American Idol epitomizes this whole idea. The point of the show isn’t so much to make music stars as it is to make stars. It’s a show about how to become famous; and once famous, its offspring can make money in a variety of ways. Idol alums have sold a lot of records, obviously, but they’ve also made a lot of money for FOX as TV stars, and some of them have become movie stars (Jennifer Hudson), Broadway stars (Clay Aiken, Tamyra Gray), and so on…

Obviously some transmedia careers are better than others, and some “brands” are just not strong enough to thrive in multiple platforms (and sometimes the talent isn’t there). As an example of this whole phenomenon, here’s my list of the best and worst of the transmedia superstars:

Best

• Beyonce - Media conquered: music, movies, fashion, Jay-Z
• Miley Cyrus - Media conquered: music, television, movies, live concerts, theme parks, awards shows, magazine covers, basically the whole world.
• Justin Timberlake - Media conquered: music, movies (he’s actually a very good actor), MTV.
• Oprah - Media conquered: everything imaginable.
• Jared Leto – Just kidding! Though he has been in some good movies (Fight Club, Requiem for a Dream) and good TV shows (My So-Called Life), his rock band (30 Seconds to Mars) is pretty terrible.

Worst

• Jewel - Media conquered: music. Media failures: movies (she wasn’t bad in Ang Lee’s Ride With the Devil, but it was totally a one-and-done for her as an actress), poetry (A Night Without Armor, anyone?).
• Britney Spears – Media conquered: music. Media failures: movies (Um… Crossroads), television (Britney and Kevin: Chaotic was a disaster, though she was pretty good on How I Met Your Mother), motherhood…
• Paris Hilton – Media conquered: nightclubs, television (The Simple Life), adult video, prison. Media failures: music (one and done with the self-titled Paris), movies (House of Wax), and general classiness.

The Fall

The Fall is as cinematic a film as you will ever see. And this is fitting, because The Fall is essentially a love letter to the form—an outpouring of expressive sound, image, space, movement, and color, strewn together in delicately messy bursts and flourishes of filmic passion.

Helmed by Indian director Tarsem (whose only other film, 2000’s The Cell, was also hyper-stylized but ultimately little more), The Fall is set in the early years of cinema—circa 1915—and centers around a paralyzed movie stuntman (Lee Pace of ABC’s Pushing Daisies) who befriends a wide-eyed five-year-old immigrant (Catinca Untaru) who is a patient in the same hospital. The film moves back and forth between this “real” world and the fictional fantasy world of a swashbuckling tale the two conjure up together to help get through their convalescence.

A descendent of films like The Wizard of Oz, Big Fish, and even Pan’s Labyrinth, The Fall reminds us of the power of the moving image to provide both an escape from the harsh realities of life but also a means whereby humans can better understand themselves, and each other. In the “real life” scenes between Pace and Untaru, a partial language barrier makes it difficult for the two to always understand one another (indeed, the young and heavy-accented Untaru is often unintelligible). But when they “escape” to their shared and ongoing narrative fantasy, they achieve a transcendent understanding through the limitless possibilities of imagination.

The title of the film is not some allusion to Eden (though there are some shots and one tree in particular that might invite some such interpretations). Rather, it is a film about literal falls: the physical act of succumbing to gravity. The two main characters are in the hospital because of injuries suffered from falls, and time and time again there are dramatic, slow-mo falling shots in which characters fall into pools, off balconies, off bridges, etc. (reminiscent of the famous “kicked into the abyss” shot in The 300). The film revels in such highly expressive moments of intense action and vivid imagery. Indeed, the film is really just a collection of isolated moments and movements, following the form of a vaudeville revue, evoking the nascent cinema's tendency to be what Tom Gunning called a "cinema of attractions."

Eschewing CGI and digital fall-backs, Tarsem aims to capture the thrill and beauty of actual materiality, manipulated through old-fashioned filmmaking techniques to create transformative flights of fancy. Here again he pays homage to early cinema, where people like D.W. Griffith first realized the expressive potentials of cinematic storytelling: things like parallel and non-linear editing, varying shot lengths, and the ability to play “tricks” on the audience to make physical impossibilities appear possible.

The narrative of The Fall also references early cinema, which focused on episodic spectacle and serialized melodrama. The swashbuckling, globe-trotting adventures of The Fall’s fantasy world reflect the spirit of silent cinema’s first attempts at melodrama: serials like The Perils of Pauline, The Hazards of Helen, and The Exploits of Elaine. Those serials featured exotic locations and villains (often sheiks or Indians) with frequent literal cliffhangers, daring stunts, and other such (yes!) falls. Such early serials inspired later exotic adventures like Tarzan, Indiana Jones and The Mummy—films that were about, at least in part, the magic of cinema itself.

Tarsem has a strong command of the moving image form and a distinctive visual style honed through years of commercial and music video work. His career path mirrors style-centric directors like David Fincher and Spike Jonze, who serve as “presented by” marquee names for this film. The aesthetic of The Fall is a mixture of Dadism, surrealism, and naturalistic exoticism (with stunning location shoots in places like India, Namibia, and South Africa), and Tarsem seems to invoke people like M.C. Esher, Man Ray, Sergei Eisenstein, and Salvador Dali in his evocation of a pre-WWI modernist expressionism.

The result is a trip, to be sure, but one that is more accessible than, say, David Lynch’s Inland Empire (another film that thrills in pushing the boundaries of the cinematic). It isn’t perfect (the acting can at times be a tad too saccharine), but The Fall is certainly one of the most unique films of the year—a cinematic journey that is both thoroughly modern and strikingly classical.