On the way movies could have gone but didn't:

The use of long shots showing the mundane, seemingly meaningless dialouge, huge shots of larger-than-life locales. All of these seems to have been the way that American movies didn't go as they grew and developed into their own school of film. We have gone more for scenes that don't show us what happened per se but let us see enough to let us come to a logical conclusion when we see someone start up a staircase, then have an immediate cut to said person at the top of a staircase, turning to go into a room. Whether this is part of our ADHD nature as Americans, or our film-makers realization that people don't need to have EVERY. LITTLE. THING. Hammered into our head in order to know what has happened in a chronologically sequential ordering in a film.

But, did American films truly turn their back on this school?

2001: A Space Oddesey, if anything, is an embracing of this sort of ideology on film, like never seen; however, it is not without it's use of logical deduction to figure out exactly what happened has happened in a few scenes. For example, nearly every scene in the Discovery spacecraft with Frank and Dave traversing its corridors are painstakingly depicted, showing his every step, every door opening, every rotation of the crews' quarters, every launch of the pods. In addition, the remarkable use of silence to convey the feelings and true dialouge of the film also seem to have a sort of "master shot" feeling to them (Most notable about this is that three of the most important scenes, the appearance of the Monolith on Earth, the discussion of shutting down HAL, and the final Star Baby scenes are all done in complete and total silence).

However, the American influence remains. We know it is HAL who kills all the astronauts, even though we never actually see the act done. We know that Dave enters the Monolith in orbit around Jupiter, but we never actually see it. We know that the discovery of the monolith on the moon and the subsequent tripping of it's cosmic alarm leads directly to the Jupiter mission, but we never seen the talks that would have lead to the undertaking of such a monumental task.

So, American film didn't go the way of their theatrical European cousins. Not to say we didn't learn from them, though...

One of the many things that seems to get me about movies is when there is this fundamental search for truth in the film. This is one of the characteristics of film noir and neo-noir, one of the cornerstones of the dark, gritty, urban films that strike a chord in most Americans. It is this sort of search for what is really going on that most people can believe in.

But what if the truth is not what we wanted? Or even worse, what if the truth is what we want to find out, only to wish we had never known it in the first place?

Movies like this often are the most shocking, the most memorable. The truth is a petty, yet righteous cause in America. Our exemplars or enemies for various reasons are often the whistleblowers or the muckrackers. Upton Sinclair was the darling of Teddy Roosevelt for his muckracking during the Progressive Era. Jane Fonda was hated for expose/propaganda/rich kid BS of the bombings of Hanoi. Watergate, 'nuff said.

So what about truth in the movies? Sometimes, we are absolutely shocked by it, as is the case of, say, the revelation of Darth Vader being Luke's father (No, that's not possible!). Another example would be that Verbal Kent is indeed Keyser Soze. In other circumstances, the truth makes us bitter and angry at either the characters or something else in the movie. Terminator 3 had the revelation that SkyNet could NOT be destroyed as it was software run on numerous computers over the internet. An even better example would be when we find out, at the end of the British film Layer Cake. (Seeing as that is one of my favorite movies, I am not going to ruin the end here.)

And then there is the final category, truth that we already know. Two words:
SOYLENT GREEN

So, the truth is a tricky subject in film. How do we best adjust to it? Handle it? Consume it? Portray it?

Simple: Do it in black and white.

Clint Eastwood is infinitely better than John Wayne.

Steve McQueen is superior to Chuck Norris in all regards.

Martin Scorsese deserves a damn Oscar for Best Picture, for Chrissake.

George Lucas needs to stop remaking Republic serials in his own image.

How Danny Elfman, leader of the craptacular Oingo Boingo, became a hot commodity in scores for movies will always befuddle me.

If Uwe Böll ruins one more video game movie, we will have to blitzkrieg his ass.

M Night Shamalyan needs to stop relying on some melodramatic twist to make his movies popular. We get it, man.

Why samurai movies aren't more popular in this country baffles me.

I'm pretty sure Jerry Bruckheimer is partly to blame for the increasing dissatisfactionn with "normal" life in America.

It never ceases to amaze me what we will go to in order to sate our desire for a well-fed nostalgia.

It seems that one of the defining movements as of late has been to try and live off of some kind happy feeling that we've invented and transplanted into some crappy years gone by. For instance, last night my roommate and I were watching George Clooney's let's-stick-it-to-the-man-indie-work Good Night, and Good Luck. The thing that got me about it was the filming of the entire in black and white, just as most people had only known Mr. Murrow. An unashamed IV of nostalgia into the American vein.

But this isn't the only case of this.

How many movies that have been released in recent years have been nothing more than tired remakes of older movies? Poseidon and the Poseidon Adventure. Lindsay Lohan's Herbie and the original Love Bug movies. Alfie and Alfie. The Amityville Horror. Assault on Precent 13. The Hills Have Eyes. The Bad News Bears. Cheaper By The Dozen. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. Dawn of the Dead. The Fog. So on and so forth.

Why? Why, why, why, why, why?

We're out of ideas. We need to go back to a film from our childhood in order to feel some sense of happiness or security. The feel of famliarity is necessary to our happiness. I guess it could be any of these, but it all comes down to one thing:

People better stop ruining movies I grew up on by putting Hillary Duff in them.

What is it about the anti-hero that Americans are so enamored with?  Is it the freedom that they embody, that I'm-doing-things-my-way sort of attitude?  Is it because there's some deeper subconscious appeal to our sense of our history, like these men are the new Davy Crocketts or mountain men?  It might just be that we love a character with, when done correctly, as much depth as the anti-hero embodies.  I don't know.

All I know is that some of our favorite film characters are anti-heros (Although many will go so far to say that exemplar characters such as Peck's Atticus Finch are just as loved, and I may agree with them).  Think of some of the most famous roles and characters in American film, keeping in mind that my being only 21 years of age has kept me from seeing a lot of American film:

The Boondock Saints.  Bullitt.  Any protagonist from Sin City. Dirty Harry.  Sam Spade.  Batman.¹  Travis Bickle.  Snake Plissken.²  The Dude.  Tony Montana.  V.  The Man With No Name.  Mr. XXXX.³  Max Rockatansky.  Beatrix Kiddo.  Han Solo.† Neo.

Why is this?  Hell if I know.  I seem to remember something from high school, a film trying to give an overview of the 70s for we kids of iGeneration.  One of the things that the film mentioned was discontent and mistrust towards the government in the aftermath of the one-two combo of Vietnam and Watergate, and that following this film in America took a dark turn.  I don't know if this is a scapegoat, or just some sort of over-all, but it does seem today that our villians are, more often than not, embodiments of the former hero or exemplar.  Suits.  Well-off.  Stylish.  Culturally elite.  These men are now the enemies, the villians, the Man.

Interesting.  I guess the pinstriped gangster has been revived, in a way.


¹when presented in some other manner than the the camp that just seems to be cursed to make the Dark Knight a joke.
²fanboys, unite!
³L4yer Cak3, peeps.  Not that Vin Diesel BS
†At first!

The buzzwords associated with media have always been a laughable affair. The English language, rife as it is with adjectives and tones through which we can say any one thing in an inordinate manner of ways, lends itself well to any sort of advertising language or gimmick. The buzzwords and neologisms that are either invented, reinvented, or just appropriated for movies in their trailers and miscellaneous ads often times either sway us or dissuade us from seeing a certain movie.

So, what is a movie? What is a motion picture?

Simply put, a movie is for the general masses. A movie is White Chicks. Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector. Soul Plane. Scary Movie. Freddy Got Fingered. Dodgeball. xXx. Red Sonja. Gremlins. The old Transformers movie. The new Transformers movie. Any Adam Sandler movie. Any movie that was based off of one of those SNL sketches that was funny at first, but not really by the time the movie has been made. BASEketball. Team America. Orgasmo. The Pirates of the Carribean movies. Any Jerry Bruckheimer film for that matter.

A movie is a film that tells a story, but tells in such a way that the common man can simply enjoy it, digestable and spoon-feedable as it is.

A motion picture? Dr. Strangelove. Lawrence of Arabia. Pi. Ghost in the Shell.

A motion picture is any film that is specifically made to appeal to a demographic through subtlety and by carrying a message that only they will be able to fully appreciate. The problem with this is that there is most certainly going to be language in Shaft that crackers won't get, and there is going to be terminology in A Scanner Darkly that a NASCAR dad won't get. It's a doulbe-edged sword, but usually movies made to appeal to a specific group with a specific message are aiming a bit higher than the dregs of movie-goers.

Also, a motion picture could be a term applied to any director so deeply involved in auto-felatio that he or she has failed to see that their movie absolutely makes its usage of film a reprehensible existence.

The Piano comes to mind.