Movie Time

Said something rather silly the other day while in discussion about movies and audience response. I said that I didn't care much for movies that required the viewer to watch them multiple times to gain a true appreciation. I said I found that rather self-important and pretentious, that a director would assume his audience would be so enraptured by his vision that they'd sacrifice even more of their time to worship the vast creative spectacle in which they were a part. That's stupid. No matter how silly a movie is, intentionally (Spiderman) or not (Spiderman 3) you can always get more out of it with a few repeated viewings. My favorite movies are like anyone's favorite movies, I've watched them over and over and found something new with each viewing. What I meant to say was that I don't care for movies that require repeated viewings to get anything out of them. If you find yourself watching the end credits just staring at the names, bewildered with the two-hour combination of image and sound that failed to elicit any emotional response or remove the scrunched-up eyebrow expression from your face, then that movie sucks. That's not the same as thinking "What the hell? I thought she was with THEM!" or "But wait, I thought the Sandman was a Bad Guy!" That's fine, it's a good thing to be confused at the end of a movie, to feel that while it was in your capacity to understand the point, or the plot, or the twist, and that you missed a few things along the ride. It's NOT okay to feel like you had no shot at all, like a murder mystery where the killer is revealed to be food poisoning.

Of course, neither of those two movie types have anything to do with the summer movie experience. Louder=better, sequels all over the place, and lots of dead ethnic bodies. So far the summer movie extravaganza has been pretty successful. Iron Man was a great time, the only movie I've seen since Transformers where I wanted to leave the theatre and head straight into the next showing. It's funny, doesn't take itself too seriously, great effects and the dialogue, often a weakness with action films, is natural and engaging because of director Favreau encouraging the cast to improve their dialogue. So big thumbs up. I enjoyed Indiana Jones as well, not as much but still more than most people I've talked to. It was hard to watch because you spent most of the time wishing it was 15 years ago, or more, because there's a difference between "rugged" and "old." With Get Smart and The Dark Knight on the way, there's still lots to look forward too and judge.

Then we come to the Incredible Hulk. North American movie fans were unhappy with a version of the Hulk that was insightful, used innovative cinematography, was character-focused, and made an ambitious, introspective attempt to go beyond the simple Jekyll-and-Hyde transformations. I thought it was pretty good, a 3/4 star movie, but only because it revealed the truth about the Incredible Hulk: he's boring. When he's Banner, he's just a regular nerd who doesn't do anything terribly interesting. When he's the Hulk, he just gets mad and wrecks shit up. He's either trying not to become the Hulk, which is all we want to see, but then we he becomes the Hulk there's no personality, no motivation outside wrecking everything, and no possibility of character development. Pretty one-dimensional, for a two-dimensional character. And I like the Hulk, he's a pretty cool comic book character, but one that Ang Lee's movie proved did not translate well to the screen. Marvel thought otherwise, and went ahead and made another one starring noted action superstar Edward Norton. Norton went headfirst into the movie from what I can tell, writing huge portions of the scripts and battling with producers for a less mainstream, more intelligent final cut. You know, like the first one. To prepare for the role of Bruce Banner he studied deep breathing exercises, gained 20 pounds of muscle, learned to speak fluent Portuguese and Spanish, lost 60 pounds of fat, went to Harvard for 12 years and graduated with a PhD in molecular biology, and exposed himself to obscene levels of gamma rays. Oh, and he had to learn how to wear green contacts.

It's not a bad movie, the performances are all pretty inspired actually. They look like they're having fun, playing comic book characters with comic book emotions rather than real-world characters. It's just that the movie itself is pretty standard. The story is pretty ordinary, no origin story for the Hulk (shown in flashbacks during the opening credits) but one for the villain, themes about lusting for more power (groundbreaking), experimental military technology gone bad, and a love triangle that just gets dropped halfway through. The Hulk looks fantastic though; lots of people seemed to think he looked bad in the last one, I thought he looked fine, but a huge improvement in effects for the Hulk and for Emil Blonsky's Mr. Hyde. And the Hulk beats things up real good, using car halves (!) as weapons. I left feeling like my summer movie expectations had been well met, but certainly feeling like the film aspired for far less than the first one. It's like gymnastics or diving at the Olympics, more credit goes for attempting a spectacle with a higher rate of difficulty.

Gossip

Boredom at work, is there anything it can't do? Except for anything, of course. Boredom at work is an industrial-size incubator for gossip, a way to pass the time while artificially propping up one's adrenal system so that, for one moment in the day, you feel motivated. The velocity that gossip will spread (VG) is inversely proportional to the meaningfulness of a person's job title on the employee ranking scale (T). You can calculate the time it will take for News (N) to spread based on the time it takes to have a gossip-related exchange, as in the following typical workplace example:

"Did you hear about Honus, the hilarious foreigner with a heart of gold?"
"No! What happened?"
"I can't really talk about it, but it looks like he's in trouble"
"For what?!?"
"I shouldn't tell anybody but it's bad, really bad, like Denise Richards-in-The World Is Not Enough-bad."
"Come on, I won't tell anyone!"
"Okay, but you absolutely positively ultrasupersisivity CANNOT tell anyone else. Honus committed a ritual virgin sacrifice in the shipping room using old cardboard, lighter fluid, a forklift and orange safety cones."
"So what?"
"It was DURING his shift and he used company materials!"
"OH NO!!!!!!"
"Yeah, it look like he's going to get a WRITTEN WARNING!!!!"
"OH NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Given that this is a typical workplace gossip exchange, the word length, and thus the time it takes to replicate itself, becomes a Word Number Constant (WNC) in our formula. That'll do for now, and once a certain physics friend of mine bothers to read this he can help me articulate the formula properly. I realize that is this merely 11th grade math but I turned from that path long ago. I have chosen exile.

Gossip, of course, creates paranoia. In my own case, I like my job enough to get through the day but not enough to care very much about the surrounding work atmosphere. I'm aware of the news, I can't help but ask follow-up questions as my curiosity gets the better of me, but once the conversation is over any feelings of sympathy or bitterness disappear. The latest rumour, probably founded in some degree of truth, was that our department was being watched for possible internal theft. This was due to some discrepancies in the cashouts and some recent "employee activity." Since I've been at work the last six days and it's been during this time that suspicions have increased, I "naturally" assumed that I was being watched. Because no stock is missing, no cashout issues came back to my employee number and I haven't actually done anything, it's no big deal. Of course, this is a boring job, so any excuse to run the imagination for a few minutes is a welcome relief for an increasingly atrophied brain. For my own amusement I've played out noirlike scenarios where I've been pulled into the back room, with no windows, two chairs separated by a long table, while a mustached, chain-smoking Dennis Franz-lookalike tries to "break me down."

After a while of envisioning all the different shades of grey these walls will be and the different types of mustaches Dennis would have, I realized that the idea of being outright accused of stealing from the store did not bother me at all. I had no real problem with having my moral compass challenged and my professional integrity called into question. That struck me as amusing and frankly, a much more interesting way of passing the time than helping Ernie the Geriatric understand that no, technology isn't cyclical and the VCR isn't coming back. No, the part that bothered me about being accused of theft is that they thought I'd get caught. What? You think I'm stupid enough to just yank things off the shelf like some 15 year old, or simply not ring things through on a purchase? A little respect please. You can challenge my values, accuse me of ethical impropriety and threaten my people with slavery and death but you do NOT question my ability to pull of a heist! How DARE you lump me in with common smash-and-grabbers!? You think you could CATCH me??? Quit wasting my time and go check on Honus, I think we're coming up on another full moon.

I've never stolen anything from a job in my life, except for several thousand tons of sweet and sour pork, steamed rice, spring rolls, dry pork, spicy prawns and office supplies, so I really don't know if I'd be a good thief or not. Well okay, I'd be better than most of the idiots who steal from stores because most thieves are poor and all poor people are dumb, therefore most thieves are dumb. It's an entire genre of Hollywood movies, the Dignified Criminal Wearing Expensive Suits genre, that's warped one's way of looking at thievery in our society. Because those films (and Futurama) have established that stealing is cool, the only possible character flaw that can be derived from someone who's stolen something is incompetence. Did they get caught? Then they're sloppy and stupid and a Bad Person. Did they get away with it? Then they applied themselves, worked hard and went from the Bottom to the Top and, in doing so, achieved the American Dream and became an American Hero. So don't accuse me of theft, and by extension that I might do such a poor job as to get caught, because what you're really calling me is un-American. If you do that, the terrorists win and all of Toby Keith's work has been in vain. This isn't making much sense anymore.