Of Butterflies and Sharks

The Onion has a pretty good bi-weekly (?) column called Commentary Tracks of the Damned that "reviews" the commentary tracks of truly bad DVDs and lists their crimes against humanity. One that caught my eye was the one for the Ashton Kutcher shitfest The Butterfly Effect.

For those of you who don't like to click on links, here are some of my favorite lines:

Crime: Giving a lead role which requires convincing portrayals of a convict, a frat boy, a paraplegic, a genius, and a mental patient to Ashton Kutcher, an actor who has thus far shown he can play everything from a dumb guy in the '70s (That '70s Show) to a modern-day dumb guy (Dude, Where's My Car?) to a real-life dumb guy who plays pranks on his dumb buddies (Punk'd).

"I mean, walking into a room and being believable and offering your mouth for someone's dick is not an easy thing to do."

Heartwrenching dialogue.

And you HAVE to read this next article. Please, if only for the children.

Finally, to cap the day off, I had the (many would say mis-)fortune of watching Open Water. And with the definite misfortune of sitting next to people who insisted on talking on their phones during the movie, which didn't make me like the movie one bit better.

I hate people who do that. I wish it was legal to use a heavy metal object to hit such an offender in the head until his/her phone was permanently grafted to their skull. The worst thing was, it was a couple, and they were both doing it simultaneously at one point. If they weren't on their phones, the girl was commenting on the action in Malay to her other friend, who was next to me.

Which brings me to another pet peeve: People who think the world of their observations and make them loudly during a movie. I hate it enough when it's in a language I don't understand, like Malay. It's worse when it's in English, because I can then know exactly how banal and moronic it is. It's fine if you have a witty comment - bad movies can often be made infinitely better this way - but often, it's along these lines:

Couple surface after the dive. The previous scene has very clearly shown the boat leaving.
Woman behind me (to boyfriend): "Aiyah, the ship left already!"

Water is teeming with sharks.
Same woman: "So many sharks!"

Spoiler ahead! (If you care, skip the next paragraph)

Female lead lets male lead go (after he's dead) and then casts off her stuff. Sharks are circling. Finally she submerges into the water of her own volition.
Again, that silly woman: "She's drowning herself!"

Spoiler over...

"1.00pm" fades up on the screen.
Woman beside me: "One pm."

I can read, thank you very much. If you think your companion can't, then please, just whisper it quietly into their ear. And I can generally read plot points when I'm paying attention, as I'm sure most audience members can. Giving evidence that you can do so, and loudly transmitting said evidence to the room, merely qualifies you as a lame person who should be fed to the sharks, preferably while you were fully conscious.

Ugh. Anyhow, about the movie:

I can't say I truly felt anything more than the occasional shiver when a shark appeared. In fact, I almost wish the male character had his leg ripped entirely off instead, because the two leads were annoying me. They didn't seem to have a lot of chemistry together, and scenes where they desperately said "I love you" to each other in the face of death seemed to ring false. Also, making audiences irritated with your bitching and whining doesn't make you more sympathetic, and neither does trite, exposition-ey dialogue.

Heavy-handed scenes of people having fun on their vacations also makes me annoyed. Yes, we understand that they are in peril while all the rest of the vacationers are sipping magaritas or relaxing by the pool (safe water vs. dangerous water... ooh, what ironical juxtaposition). After a while, it fell into an easily predictable pattern:

Scene of leads bitching / in danger / bitching in the face of danger / etc.
Dissolves between shots of water - closeups, wide, etc. - marking the passage of time.
Another scene of the leads doing whatever it is they're doing.
Heavy-handed sequence of other tourists having fun on their vacations.
And repeat ad nauseum. Or, until you finally decide to kill the fuckers off because even you are getting annoyed by them.

Which is not to say it's all bad... at least there was one point where I went, "Ooh, that's pretty clever." And here's the lesson:

If you have an ultra low budget and need a scene set in a storm, throw a low-level light on the entire scene and shoot it that way. In post, simply do quick fades from and to black, as if lightning was lighting up the scene momentarily and voila! Thunderstorm simulated! Of course this only works if you have really good sound design.

Alright, now get off your lazy ass and go make your own movies.

Final quick note: Zhang Yimou's Hero is at the top of the US box office for the second consecutive week?! That's pretty unbelievable. I haven't seen it, but from what I've seen in articles, Chris Doyle's cinematography looks pretty fuckin' gorgeous.